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PRESENTED BY 



A 
THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE 




Caihd. 



A THOUSAND 
MILES UP THE NILE 



Oyr-^ 



BY 



,V^ 



AMELIA ^Bf EDWARDS 

AUTHOR OF 

' UNTRODDEN PEAKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALLEYS," " LORD BRACKENBURY,' 

" BARBARA'S HISTORY," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



' It flows through old hush'd Egypt and its sands, 
Like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream." 

— LEIGH HUNT 



BOSTON 
JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



CONTENTS. 



FAOB 

CHAPTER I. —Cairo AND THE Great Pyramid ... 13 
Arrival at Cairo. — Shepheard's Hotel. — The Moskee. — 
The Khan Khaleel. — The Bazaars. — Dahabeeyahs. — 
Ghizeh. — The Pyramids. 

CHAPTER II. —Cairo and the Mecca Pilgrimage . . 29 

The Mosque of Sultan Hassan. — Moslems at prayer. — 
Mosque of Mehemet Ali. — View from the Platform. — De- 
parture of the Caravan for Mecca. — The Bdb en-Nasr. — 
The Procession. — The Mahmal. — Howling Dervishes. 

— The Mosque of 'Amr. — The Shubra Road. 

CHAPTER III. — Cairo to Bedreshayn 45 

Departure for the Nile Voyage. — Farewell to Cairo. — 
Turra. — The Philse and crew. — The Dahabeeyah and the 
Nile sailor. — Native music. — Bedreshayn. 

CHAPTER IV. — Sakkarah and Memphis 56 

The Palms of Memphis. — Three groups of Pyramids. — 
The M. B.'s and their groom. — Relic-hunting. — The Pyra- 
mid of Ouenephes. — The Serapeum. — A royal raid. — 
The Tomb of Ti. — The Fallen Colossus. — Memphis. 

CHAPTER V. — Bedreshayn to Minieh 76 

The rule of the Nile. — The Shaduf. — Beni Suef . — 
Thieves by night. — The Chief of the Guards. — A sand- 
storm. — "Holy Sheykh Cotton." — The Convent of the 
Pulley. —A Copt. — The Shadow of the World. — Minieh. 

— A native market. — Prices of provisions. — The Dom 
palm. — Fortune-telling. — Ophthalmia. 

CHAPTER VI. — Minieh to Siut 94 

Christmas Day. — The Party completed. — Christmas Din- 
ner on the Nile. — A Fantasia. — Noah's Ark. — Birds of 
Egypt. — Gebel Abufayda. — Unknown Stelae. — Impris- 
oned. — The Scarab-beetle. — Manfalut. — Sitit. — Red and 
black pottery. — Ancient tombs. — View over the plain. — 
Biblical lesrend. 



viii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER VII. — Si^T TO Denderah Ill 

An "Experienced Surgeon." — Passing scenery. — Girgeh. — 
Sheykh Selim. — Kasr es Syad. — Forced labour. — Temple 
of Denderah. — Cleopatra. — Benighted. 

CHAPTER VIII. — Thebes and Karnak 134 

Luxor. — Donkey-boys. — Topography of Ancient Thebes. — 
Pylons of Luxor. — Poem of Pentaur. — The solitary Obe- 
lisk. — Interior of the Temple of Luxor. — Polite postmaster. 

— Ride to Karnak. — Great Temple of Karnak. — The Hypo- 
style Hall. — A world of ruins. 

CHAPTER IX. — Thebes to AsstrAN . .- 154 

A storm on the Nile. — Erment. — A gentlemanly Bey. — 
Esneh. — A buried Temple. — A long day's sketching. 

— Salame the chivalrous. — Remarkable Coin. — Antichi. — 
The Fellah. — The pylons of Edfu. — An exciting race. 

— The Philfe wins by a length. 

CHAPTER X. — Assu AN AND Elephantine 171 

Assuan. — Strange wares for sale. — Madame Nubia. — 
Castor oil. — The black Governor. — An enormous blunder. 

— Tannhauser in Egypt. — Elephantine. — Inscribed ^jot- 
sherds. — Bazaar of Assuan. — The Camel. — A ride in the 
Desert. — The Obelisk of the Quarry. — A death in the 
town. 

CHAPTER XL — The Cataract and the Desert ... 189 

Scenery of the Cataract. — The Sheykh of the Cataract. — 
Vexatious delays.: — The Paintei''s vocabulary. — Mahatta. 

— Ancient bed of the Nile. — Abyssinian Caravan. 

CHAPTER XII. — PmL^ 201 

Pharaoh's Bed. — The Temples. — Champollion's discov- 
ery. — The Painted Columns. — Coptic Philae. — Philge and 
Desaix. — Chamber of Osiris. — Inscribed Rock. — View 
from the roof of the Temple. 

CHAPTER XIIL — Pmi.^ TO KOROSKO 225 

Nubian scenery. — A sand-slope. — Missing Yusef. — Trad- 
ing by the way. — Panoramic views. — Volcanic cones. — 
Dakkeh. — Korosko. — Letters from home. 

CHAPTER XIV. — KOROSKO TO Abou SiMBEL 234 

• El-'Id el-Kebir. — Stalking wild ducks. — Temple of Amada. 

— Fine art of the Thothmes. — Derr. — A native funeral. — 
Temple of Derr. — The " fair " families. — The Sakkieh. — 
Arrival at Abou Simbel by moonliglit. 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XV.— Rameses the Great 250 

Youth of Rameses the Great. — Ti'eaty with the Kheta . — His 
wives. — His great works. — The Captivity. — Pithom and 
Rameses. — Kauiser and Keniamon. — The Birth of Moses. 

— Tomb of Osymandias. — Character of Rameses the Great. 

CHAPTER XVI.— Abou Simbel 270 

The Colossi. — Portraits of Rameses the Great. — Tlie Great 
Sand-drift. — The smaller Temples. — ' ' Rameses and Nef er- 
tari." — The Great Temple. — A monster tableau. — Alone 
in the Great Temple. — Trail of a crocodile. — Cleaning 
the Colossus. — The sufferings of the sketcher. 

CHAPTER XVn.— The Second Cataract 296 

Volcanic mountains. — Kalat Adda. — Gebel esh-Shems. — 
The first crocodile. — Dull scenery. — Wady Halfeh — The 
Rock of Abusir. — The Second Cataract. — The great view. 

— Crocodile-slaying. — Excavating a tumulus. — Comforts 
of home on the Nile. 

CHAPTER XVm. — Discoveries at Abou Simbel ... 308 
Society at Abou Simbel. — The Painter discovei's a rock-cut 
chamber. — Sunday employment. — Reinforcement of na- 
tives. — Excavation. — The Sheykh. — Discovery of human 
remains. — Discovery of pylon and staircase. — Decorations 
of Painted Chamber. — Inscriptions. 

CHAPTER XIX. — Back through Nubia ...... 336 

Temples ad infinitum. — Tosko. — Crocodiles. — Derr and 
Amada again. — Wady Sabooah. — Haughty beauty. — A 
nameless city. — A river of sand. — Undiscovered Temple. 

— Maharrakeh. — Dakkeh. — Fortress of Kobban. — Gerf 
Hossayn. — Dendoor. — Bay t-el- Welly. — The Karnak of 
Nubia. — Silco of the Ethiopians. — Tafah. — Dabod. — 
Baby-shooting. — A dilemma. — Justice in Egypt. — The 
last of Philie. 

CHAPTER XX. — SiLSiLis and Edfu 369 

Shooting the Cataract. — Kom Ombo. — Quarries of Silsilis. 

— Edfu the most perfect of Egyptian Temples. — View 
from the pylons. — Sand columns. 

CHAPTER XXI. —Thebes 386 

Luxor again. — Imitation "Anteekahs." — Digging for Mum- 
mies. — Tombs of Thebes. — The Ramesseum. — The granite 
Colossus. — Medinet Habu. — The Pavilion of Rameses HI. — 
The Great Chronicle. — An Arab story-teller. — Gournah. — 
Bab-el-Moluk. — The shadowless Valley of Death. — The 
Tombs of the Kings. — Stolen goods. — The French House. 
: — An Arab dinner and fantasia. — The Coptic Church at 
Luxor. — A Coptic service. — A Coptic Bishop. 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGK 

CHAPTER XXn. — Abybos and Cairo 437 

Last weeks on the Nile. — Spring in Egypt. — Ninety-nine in 
the shade. — Samata. — Unbroken donkeys. — The Plain of 
Abydos. — Harvest-time. — A Biblical idyll. — Arabat the 
Buried. — Mena. — Origin of the Egyptian People. — Tem- 
ple of Seti. — New Tablet of Abydos. — Abydos and Teni. 

— Kom-es-Sultan. — Visit to a native Aga. — The Hareem. 

— Condition of women in Egypt. — Back at Cairo. — " In the 
name of the Prophet, Cakes ! " — The M61id-en-Nebee. — A 
human causeway. — The Boulak Museum. — Prince Ra-hotep 
and Princess Nef er-t. — Early drive to Ghizeh. — Ascent of 
the Great Pyramid. — The Sphinx. — The view from the 
Top. — The end. 



APPENDIX. 



PAGB 

I. A. M'Callum, Esq., to the Editor of the Times .... 461 

II. The Egyptian Pantheon 461 

III. The Religious Belief of the Egyptians 463 

IV. Egyptian Chronology 466 

V. Contemporary Chronology of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and 

Babylon 468 



LIST OF PHOTOGEAVURE ILLUSTEATIONS. 



PAGE 

1. Cairo Frontispiece 

2. Mosque op Mehemet Ali 28 

3. A Dahabeetah 44 

4. Ruins of Memphis . . ' 73 

5. Sugar Cane Sellers op Bedreshayn 89 

6. SitT 110 

7. Denderah 128 

8. Thebes . 154 

9. AssuAN * .... 172 

10. Elephantine 186 

11. The First Cataract 200 

12. Phil^ 224 

13. Temple op Dakkeh 230 

14. Statue op Rameses the Great 264 

15. Wady Halpa 296 

16. The Second Cataract 304 

17. Great Temple at Abou Simbel 330 

18. Temple op Amada 336 

19. SiLsiLis 368 

20. Temple op Osiris 408 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

The Secret of the Sphinx 11 

Cairo Donkey 16 

Tunis Market, Cairo 19 

Carpet Bazaar, Cairo 21 

Native Cangias 54 

Head op Ti .69 

MitrIhIneh 75 

The Shadup . 80 

•' Holy Sheykh Cotton " 84 

Market Boat Minieh 92 

Gebel Abupayda 98 

Riverside Tombs near SiCt 103 

SifJT .105 

GrlRGEH 115 

Kasr es Syad 117 

Denderah 121 

Cleopatra 124 

Sheykh SeLim 133 

Colonnade op Horemheb . . 135 

Temple op Luxor , . . . 139 

Hypostyle Hall, Karnak 149 

Temple op Esneh 159 

Native Boat, Assuan 170 

Camel at Assuan 188 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 3 

PAGE 

Soudan Traders at Maiiatta 195 

Pharaoh's Bed. Phil^ 199 

Grand Colonnade, Phil.e 203 

Painted Columns, portico op large temple, Phil^ . . . 209 

Early Christian Shrine, Phil^ 211 

Shrines of Osiris. — 1, 2, and 3 219, 230 

Resurrection of Osiris 221 

Inscribed Monolithic Rock, Phil^ 223 

Temple of Dakkeh, Nubia 231 

Nubian Jewelry 233 

Temple op Derr, Nubia 242 

Sakkieh, or Water Wheel 246 

Cartouches op Rameses the Great 251 

Outlines prom Bas-Reliep at Bayt-el- Welly . . . 271, 272 

Profile op Rameses II 273 

Great Rock-cut Temple, Abou Simbel, Nubia 275 

Smaller Temple, Abou Simbel, Nubia 279 

Cleaning the Colossus 293 

Wady Halpeh 300 

The Rock op Abusir 307 

Entrance op Speos 313 

Excavated Speos . 319 

Pattern op Cornice, Speos 321 

Standard op Horus Aroeris 322 

Rameses II., of Speos 323 

Sculptured Inscriptions, South Wall Speos 325 

Hieratic Inscription, North Wall Speos 329 

Temple op Amada 338 

Temple of Wady Sabooah 341 

Temple op Gerf Hossayn, Nubia 351 



4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAOE 

Temple of Dendoor 352 

Sculptures at Bayt-el-Welly 354 

Temple op Kalabsheh, Nubia 355 

Ruined Temple at Tafah, Nubia 358 

Temple of Dabod 361 

Ruined Coptic Convent near Phil^e 363 

Phil^ from the South 367 

Nubian Woman and Child 368 

Temple of Komb Ombo, Upper Egypt 373 

Ta-ur-t (Silsilis) 375 

The Lovely Arab Maiden 385 

Digging for Mummies 389 

OsiRiDE Court and Fallen Colossus, Ramessum, Thebes . 395 

Palace Entrance— Medinet Habu 401 

Sculptured Vases at Medinet Habu 403 

OsiRiDE Court, Medinet Habu 407 

Columns op Amenhotep III. (Luxor) 425 

Sakkieh at SitT 450 

"In the Name of the Prophet— Cakes !" 451 

Statues of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t . . . 454 

Sphinx and Pyramids 458 

Broken Sistrum 460 



PREFACE 

TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

First published in 1877, this book has been out of print 
for several years. I have therefore very gladly revised it 
for a new and cheaper edition. In so revising it, I have 
corrected some of the historical notes by the light of later 
discoveries ; but I have left the narrative untouched. Of 
the political changes which have come over the land of 
Egypt since that narrative was written, I have taken no 
note ; and because I in no sense offer myself as a guide to 
others, I say nothing of the altered conditions under which 
most Nile travellers now perform the trip. All these things 
will be more satisfactorily, and more practically, learned 
from the pages of Baedeker and Murray. 

AMELIA B. EDWAEDS. 
Westbuky-on-Trym, October 1888. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

" Un voyage en Egypte, c'est una partie d'anes at une promenade en 
bateau entremelees de ruines." — Ampere. 

Ampere has put Egypt in an epigram. " A donkey-ride 
and a boating-trip interspersed with ruins " does, in fact, 
sum up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile 
traveller. Apropos of these three things — the donkeys, 
the boat, and the ruins — it may be said that a good English 
saddle and a comfortable dahabeeyah add very considerably 
to the pleasure of the journey ; and that the more one knows 
about the past history of the country, the more one enjoys 
the ruins. 

5 



6 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats, and 
steamers, I am not qualified to speak. We, however, saw 
one iron daliabeeyah aground upon a sandbank, where, as 
we afterwards learned, it remained for three weeks. We 
also saw the wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and 
the First Cataract. It certainly seemed to us that the old- 
fashioned wooden dahabeeyah — flat-bottomed, drawing little 
water, light in hand, and easily poled off when stuck — was 
the one vessel best constructed for the navigation of the 
Nile. Other considerations, as time and cost, are, of course, 
involved in this question. The choice between dahabeeyah 
and steamer is like the choice between travelling with post- 
horses and travelling by rail. The one is expensive, leisurely, 
delightful ; the other is cheap, swift, and comparatively com- 
fortless. Those who are content to snatch but a glimpse of 
the Nile will doubtless prefer the steamer. I may add that 
the whole cost of the Philae — food, dragoman's wages, boat- 
hire, cataract, everything included except wine — was about 
£10 per day. 

With regard to temperature, we found it cool — even cold, 
sometimes — in December and January ; mild in February ; 
very warm in March and April. The climate of Nubia is 
simply perfect. It never rains ; and once past the limit of 
the tropic, there is no morning or evening chill upon the air. 
Yet even in Nubia, and especially along the forty miles which 
divide Abou Simbel from Wady Halfeh, it is cold when the 
wind blows strongly from the north. ^ 

Touching the title of this book, it may be objected that 
the distance from the port of Alexandria to the Second Cata- 
ract falls short of a thousand miles. It is, in fact, calculated 
at 964^ miles. But from the Rock of Abusir, five miles 
above Wady Halfeh, the traveller looks over an extent of 
country far exceeding the thirty or thirty-five miles neces- 
sary to make up the full tale of a thousand. We distinctly 
saw from this point the summits of mountains which lie 
about 145 miles to the southward of Wady Halfeh, and which 
look down upon the Third Cataract. 

Perhaps I ought to say something in answer to the repeated 
inquiries of those who looked for the publication of this 
volume a year ago. I can, however, only reply that the 

1 For the benefit of any who desire more exact information, I may add 
that a table of average temperatures, carefully registered day by day and 
week by week, is to be found at the end of Mr. H. Villiers Stuart's " Nile 
Gleanings." [Note to Second Edition.] 



PREFACE TO THE FIBST EDITION. 7 

Writer, instead of giving one year, has given two years to 
the work. To write rapidly about Egypt is impossible. The 
subject grows with the book, and with the knowledge one 
acquires by the way. It is, moreover, a subject beset with 
such obstacles as must impede even the swiftest pen ; and 
to that swiftest pen I lay no claim. Moreover the writer, 
who seeks to be accurate, has frequently to go for his facts, 
if not actually to original sources (which would be the texts 
themselves), at all events to translations and commentaries 
locked up in costly folios, or dispersed far and wide among 
the pages of scientific journals and the transactions of learned 
societies. A date, a name, a passing reference, may cost 
hours of seeking. To revise so large a number of illustra- 
tions, and to design tailpieces from jottings taken here and 
there in that pocket sketch-book which is the sketcher's 
constant companion, has also consumed no small amount of 
time. This by way of apology. 

More pleasant is it to remember labor lightened than to 
consider time spent ; and I have yet to thank the friends 
who have spared no pains to help this book on its way. To 
S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc. etc., so justly styled " the Parent 
in this country of a sound school of Egyptian philology," 
who besides translating the hieratic and hieroglyphic inscrip- 
tions contained in chapter xviii., has also, with infinite 
kindness, seen the whole of that chapter through the press ; 
to Reginald Stuart Poole, Esq. ; to Professor R. Owen, C.B., 
etc. etc. ; to Sir G. W. Cox, I desire to offer my hearty and 
grateful acknowledgments. It is surely not least among the 
glories of learning, that those who adorn it most and work 
hardest should ever be readiest to share the stores of their 
knowledge. 

I am anxious also to express my cordial thanks to Mr. G. 
Pearson, under whose superintendence the Avhole of the illus- 
trations have been engraved. To say that his patience and 
courtesy have been inexhaustible, and that he has spared 
neither time nor cost in the preparation of the blocks, is but 
a dry statement of facts, and conveys no idea of the kind of 
labour involved. Where engravings of this kind are exe- 
cuted, not from drawings made at first-hand upon the wood, 
but from water-colour drawings which have not only to be 
reduced in size, but to be, as it were, translated into black 
and white, the difficulty of the work is largely increased. 
In order to meet this difficulty and to ensure accuracy, Mr. 
Pearson has not only called in the services of accomplished 



8 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

draughtsmen, but in many instances has even photographed 
the subjects direct upon the wood. Of the engraver's work 
— which speaks for itself — I will only say that I do not 
know in what way it could be bettered. It seems to me 
that some of these blocks may stand for examples of the far- 
thest point to which the art of engraving upon wood has yet 
been carried. 

The principal illustrations have all been drawn upon the 
wood by Mr. Percival Skelton ; and no one so fully as my- 
self can appreciate how much the subjects owe to the deli- 
cacy of his pencil, and to the artistic feelings with which he 
has interpreted the original drawings. 

Of. the fascination of Egyptian travel, of the charm of the 
JSTile, of the unexpected and surpassing beauty of the desert, 
of the ruins which are the wonder of the world, I have said 
enough elsewhere. I must, however, add that I brought 
home with me an impression that things and people are 
much less changed in Eygpt than we of the present day are 
wont to suppose. I believe that the physique and life of 
the modern Fellah is almost identical with the physique and 
life of that ancient Egyptian laborer whom we know so well 
in the wall paintings of the tombs. Square in the shoulders, 
slight but strong in the limbs, full-lipped, brown-skinned, we 
see him wearing the same loin-cloth, plying the same shaduf, 
ploughing with the same plough, preparing the same food in 
the same way, and eating it with his fingers from the same 
bowl, as did his forefathers of six thousand years ago. 

The household life and social ways of even the provincial 
gentry are little changed. Water is poured on one's hands 
before going to dinner from just such a ewer and into just 
such a basin as we see pictured in the festival-scenes at Thebes. 
Though the lotus-blossom is missing, a bouquet is still given 
to each guest when he takes his place at table. The head of 
the sheep killed for the banquet is still given to the poor. 
Those who are helped to meat or drink touch the head and 
breast in acknowledgment, as of old. The musicians still 
sit at the lower end of the hall ; the singers yet clap their 
hands in time to their own voices ; the dancing-girls still 
dance, and the buffoon in his high cap still performs his 
uncouth antics, for the entertainment of the guests. Water 
is brought to table in jars of the same shape manufactured 
at the same town, as in the days of Cheops and Chephren ; 
and the mouths of the bottles are filled in precisely the same 
way with fresh leaves and flowers. The cucumber stuffed 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 9 

with minced-meat was a favorite dish in those times of old ; 
and I can testify to its excellence in 1874. Little boys iu 
Nubia yet wear the side-lock that graced the head of Rame- 
ses in his youth ; and little girls may be seen in a garment 
closely resembling the girdle worn by young princesses of 
the time of Thothmes the First. A Sheykh still walks with 
a long staff ; a Nubian belle still plaits her tresses in scores 
of little tails ; and the pleasure-boat of the modern Governor 
or Mudir, as well as the dahabeeyah hired by the European 
traveller, reproduces in all essential features the painted gal- 
leys represented in tlie tombs of the kings. 

hi these and in a hundred other instances, all of which 
came under my personal observation and have their place 
in the following pages, it seemed to me that any obscurity 
which yet hangs over the problem of life and thought 
in ancient Egypt originates most probably with ourselves. 
Our own habits of life and thought are so complex that they 
shut us off from the simplicity of that early world. So it 
was with the problem of hieroglyphic writing. The thing 
was so obvious that no one could find it out. As long as the 
world persisted iu believing that every hieroglyph was an 
abstruse symbol, and every hieroglyphic inscription a pro- 
found philosophical rebus, the mystery of Egyptian literature 
remained insoluble. Then at last came Champollion's 
famous letter to Dacier, showing that the hieroglyphic 
signs were mainly alphabetic and syllabic, and that the lan- 
guage they spelt was only Coptic after all. 

If there were not thousands who still conceive that the 
sun and moon were created, and are kept going, for no other 
purpose than to lighten the darkness of our little planet ; if 
only the other day a grave gentleman had not written a per- 
fectly serious essay to show that the world is a flat plain, 
one would scarcely believe that there could still be people 
who doubt that ancient Egyptian is now read and translated 
as fluently as ancient Greek. Yet an Englishman whom I 
met in Egypt — an Englishman who had long been resident 
in Cairo, and who was well acquainted with the great Egyp- 
tologists who are attached to the service of the Khedive — 
assured me of his profound disbelief in the discovery of 
ChampoUion. " In my opinion," said he, " not one of these 
gentlemen can read a line of hieroglyphics." 

As I then knew nothing of Egyptian, I could say nothing 
to controvert this speech. Since that time, however, and 
while writing this book, I have been led on step by step to 



10 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

the study of hieroglyphic writing, and I now know that 
Egyptian can be read, for the simple reason that I find my- 
self able to read an Egyptian sentence. 

My testimony may not be of much value ; but I give it 
for the little that it is worth. 

The study of Egyptian literature has advanced of late 
years with rapid strides. Papyri are found less frequently 
than they were some thirty or forty years ago; but the 
translation of those contained in the museums of Europe 
goes on now more diligently than at any former time. Reli- 
gious books, variants of the Ritual, moral essays, maxims, 
private letters, hymns, epic poems, historical chronicles, ac- 
counts, deeds of sale, medical, magical, and astronomical 
treatises, geographical records, travels, and even romances 
and tales, are brought to light, photographed, facsimiled in 
chromo-lithography, printed in hieroglyphic type, and trans- 
lated in forms suited both to the learned and to the general 
reader. 

Not all this literature is written, however, on papyrus. 
The greater proportion of it is carved in stone. Some is 
painted on wood, written on linen, leather, potsherds, and 
other substances. So the old mystery of Egypt, which was 
her literature, has vanished. The key to the hieroglyphs is 
the master-key that opens every door. Each year that now 
passes over our heads sees some old problem solved. Each 
day brings some long-buried truth to light. 

Some thirteen years ago,^ a distinguished American artist 
painted a very beautiful picture called The Secret of the 
Sphinx. In its widest sense, the Secret of the Sphinx Avould 
mean, I suppose, the whole uninterpreted and undiscovered 
past of Egypt. In its narrower sense, the Secret of the 
Sphinx was, till quite lately, the hidden significance of the 
human-headed lion which is one of the typical subjects of 
Egyptian Art. 

Thirteen years is a short time to look back upon ; yet 
great things have been done in Egypt, and in Egyptology, 
since then. Edfli, with its extraordinary wealth of inscrip- 
tions, has been laid bare. The whole contents of the Boulak 
Museum have been recovered from the darkness of the 
tombs. The very mystery of the Sphinx has been disclosed ; 
and even within the last eighteen months, M. Chabas an- 
nounces that he has discovered the date of the pyramid of 

1 These dates, it is to be remembered, refer to the year 1877, when the 
first edition of this book was published. [Note to Second Edition.] 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



11 



Mycerinus ; so for the first time establishing the chronology 
of ancient Egypt upon an ascertained foundation. Thus the 
work goes on ; students in their libraries, excavators under 
Egyptian skies, toiling along different paths towards a com- 
mon goal. The picture means more to-day than it meant 
thirteen years ago — means more, even, than the artist in- 
tended. The Sphinx has no secret now, save for the igno- 
rant. 




Each must interpret for himself 
The Secret of The Sphinx. 

In the picture, we see a brown, half-naked, toil-worn Fellah 
laying his ear to the stone lips of a colossal Sphinx, buried 
to the neck in sand. Some instinct of the old Egyptian 
blood tells him that the creature is G-od-like. He is con- 
scious of a great mystery lying far back in the past. He has, 
perhaps, a dim, confused notion that the Big Head knows 
it all, whatever it may be. He has never heard of the morn- 
ing-song of Memnon ; but he fancies, somehow, that those 



12 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

closed lips might speak if questioned. Fellah and Sphinx 
are alone together in the desert. It is night, and the stars 
are shining. Has he chosen the right hour ? What does 
he seek to know ? What does he hope to hear ? 

Mr. Vedder has permitted me to enrich this book with an 
engraving from his picture. It tells its own tale ; or rather 
it tells as much of its own tale as the artist chooses. 

AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 

Westbury-on-Tbtm, Gloucestebshire, Bee. 1877. 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER I. 

CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

It is the traveller's lot to dine at many table-d'hotes in 
the course of many wanderings ; but it seldom befalls him 
to make one of a more miscellaneous gathering than that 
which overfills the great dining-room at Shepheard's Hotel 
in Cairo during the beginning and height of the regular 
Egyptian season. Here assemble daily some two to three 
hundred persons of all ranks, nationalities, and pursuits ; 
half of whom are Anglo-Indians homeward or outward 
bound, European residents, or visitors established in Cairo 
for the winter. The other half, it may be taken for granted, 
are going up the Nile. So composite and incongruous is this 
body of Nile-goers, young and old, well-dressed and ill- 
dressed, learned and unlearned, that the new-comer's first 
impulse is to inquire from what motives so many persons of 
dissimilar tastes and training can be led to embark upon an 
expedition which is, to say the least of it, very tedious, very 
costly, and of an altogether exceptional interest. 

His curiosity, however, is soon gratified. Before two days 
are over, he knows everybody's name and eveiybody's busi- 
ness ; distinguishes at first sight between a Cook's tourist 
and an independent traveller ; and has discovered that nine- 
tenths of those whom he is likely to meet up the river are 
English or American. The rest will be mostly German, 
with a sprinkling of Belgian and French. So far en bloc ; 
but the details are more heterogeneous still. Here are 
invalids in search of health; artists in search of subjects ;_ 
sportsmen keen upon crocodiles ; statesman out for a holi- 
day ; special correspondents alert for gossip ; collectors on 

13 



14 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the scent of papyri and mummies ; men of science with only 
scientific ends in view ; and the usual surplus of idlers who 
travel for the mere love of travel, or the satisfaction of a 
purposeless curiosity. 

Now in a place like Shepheard's, where every fresh arrival 
has the honor of contributing, for at least a few minutes, to 
the general entertainment, the first appearance of L. and the 
Writer, tired, dusty, and considerably sunburnt, may well 
have given rise to some of the comments in usual circulation 
at those crowded tables. People asked each other, most likely, 
where these two wandering Englishwomen had come from ; 
wliy they had not dressed for dinner ; what brought them to 
Eg3rpt; and if they also were going up the Nile — to which 
questions it would have been easy to give satisfactory 
answers. 

We came from Alexandria, having had a rough passage 
from Brindisi followed by forty-eight hours of quarantine. 
We had not dressed for dinner because, having driven on 
from the station in advance of dragoman and luggage, we 
were but just in time to take seats with the rest. We 
intended, of course, to go up the Nile ; and had any one 
ventured to inquire in so many words Avhat brought us to 
Egypt, we should have replied : — " Stress of weather." 

For in simple truth we had drifted hither by accident, 
with no excuse of health, or business, or any serious object 
whatever ; and had just taken refuge in Egypt as one might 
turn aside into the Burlington Arcade or the Passage des 
Panoramas — to get out of the rain. 

And with good reason. Having left home early in Sep- 
tember for a few weeks' sketching in central France, we had 
been pursued by the wettest of wet weather. Washed out 
of the hill-country, we fared no better in the plains. At 
Nismes, it poured for a month without stopping. Debating 
at last whether it were better to take our wet umbrellas back 
at once to England, or push on farther still in search of sun- 
shine, the talk fell upon Algiers — Malta — Cairo ; and Cairo 
carried it. Never was distant expedition entered upon with 
less premeditation. The thing was no sooner decided than 
we were gone. Nice, Genoa, Bologna, Ancona flitted by, as 
in a dream ; and Bedreddin Hassan when he awoke at the 
gates of Damascus was scarcely more surprised than the 
writer of these pages, when she found herself on board the 
Simla, and steaming out of the port of Brindisi. 

Here, then, without definite plans, outfit, or any kind of 



CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 15 

Oriental experience, behold us arrived in Cairo on the 29th 
of November 1873, literally, and most prosaically, in search 
of fine weather. 

But what had memory to do with rains on land, or storms 
at sea, or the impatient hours of quarantine, or anything dis- 
mal or disagreeable, when one awoke at sunrise to see those 
grey-green palms outside the window solemnly bowing their 
plumed heads towards each other, against a rose-coloured 
dawn ? It was dark last night, and I had no idea that my 
room overlooked an enchanted garden, far-reaching and soli- 
tary, peopled with stately giants beneath whose tufted 
crowns hung rich clusters of maroon and amber dates. It 
was a still, warm morning. Grave grey and black crows flew 
heavily from tree to tree, or perched, cawing meditatively, 
upon the topmost branches. Yonder, between the pillared 
stems, rose the minaret of a very distant mosque ; and here 
where the garden was bounded by a high wall and a window- 
less house, I saw a veiled lady walking on the terraced roof 
in the midst of a cloud of pigeons. Nothing could be more 
simple than the scene and its accessories ; nothing, at the 
same time, more Eastern, strange, and unreal. 

But in order thoroughly to enjoy an overwhelming, inef- 
faceable first impression of Oriental out-of-doors life, one 
should begin in Cairo with a day in the native bazaars; 
neither buying, nor sketching, nor seeking information, but 
just taking in scene after scene, with its manifold combina- 
tions of light and shade, colour, costume, and architectural 
detail. Every shop-front, every street corner, every turbaned 
group is a ready-made picture. The old Turk who sets up 
his cake-stall in the recess of a sculptured doorway ; the 
donkey-boy with his gaily caparisoned ass, waiting for cus- 
tomers ; the beggar asleep on the steps of the mosque ; the 
veiled woman filling her water jar at the public fountain — 
they all look as if they had been put there expressly to be 
painted. 

Nor is the background less picturesque than the figures. 
The houses are high and narrow. The upper stories project ; 
and from these again jut windows of delicate turned lattice- 
work in old brown wood, like big bird-cages. The street is 
roofed in overhead with long rafters and pieces of matting, 
through which a dusty sunbeam straggles here and there, 
casting patches of light upon the moving crowd. The 
unpaved thoroughfare — a mere narrow lane, full of ruts and 
watered profusely twice or thrice a day — is lined with little 



16 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



wooden shop-fronts, like open cabinets full of shelves, where 
the merchants sit cross-legged in the midst of their goods, 
looking out at the passers-by and smoking in silence. Mean- 
while, the crowd ebbs and flows unceasingly — a noisy, 







CAIKO DONKEY. 



changing, restless, parti-coloured tide, half European, half 
Oriental, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages. Here are 
Syrian dragomans in baggy trousers and braided jackets ; 
barefooted Egyptian fellaheen in ragged blue shirts and felt 
skull-caps ; Greeks in absurdly stiff white tunics, like walk- 
ing penwipers ; Persians with high mitre-like caps of dark 
woven stviff ; swarthy Bedouins in flowing garments, creamy- 
white with chocolate stripes a foot wide, and head-shawl of 
the same bound about the brow with a fillet of twisted 
camel's hair ; Englishmen in palm-leaf hats and knicker- 
bockers, dangling their long legs across almost invisible 
donkeys ; native women of the poorer class, in black veils 
that leave only the eyes uncovered, and long trailing gar- 
ments of dark blue and black striped cotton ; dervishes in 
patchwork coats, their matted hair streaming from under 
fantastic head-dresses ; blue-black Abyssinians with incred- 



CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 17 

ibly slender, bowed legs, like attenuated ebony balustrades ; 
Armenian priests, looking exactly like Portia as the Doctor, 
in long black gowns and high square caps ; majestic ghosts 
of Algerine Arabs, all in Avhite ; mounted Janissaries with 
jingling sabres and gold-embroidered jackets ; merchants, 
beggars, soldiers, boatmen, labourers, workmen, in every 
variety of costume, and of every shade of complexion from 
fair to dark, from tawny to copper-colour, from deepest bronze 
to bluest black. 

Now a water-carrier goes by, bending under the weight of 
his newly replenished goatskin, the legs of which being tied 
up, the neck fitted with a brass cock, and the hair left on, 
looks horribly bloated and life-like. Now comes a sweet- 
meat-vendor with a tray of that gummy compound known to 
English children as " Lumps of Delight ; " and now an Egyp- 
tian lady on a large grey donkey led by a servant with a 
showy sabre at his side. The lady wears a rose-coloured silk 
dress and white veil, besides a black silk outer garment, 
which, being cloak, hood, and veil all in one, fills out with 
the wind as she rides, like a balloon. She sits astride ; her 
naked feet, in their violet velvet slippers, just resting on the 
stirrups. She takes care to display a plump brown arm 
laden with massive gold bracelets, and, to judge by the way 
in which she uses a pair of liquid black eyes, would not be 
sorry to let her face be seen also. Nor is the steed less well 
dressed than his mistress. His close-shaven legs and hind- 
quarters are painted in blue and white zigzags picked out 
with bands of pale yellow ; his high-pommelled saddle is re- 
splendent with velvet and embroidery ; and his headgear is 
all tags, tassels, and fringes. Such a donkey as this is worth 
from sixty to a hundred pounds sterling. Next passes an 
open barouche full of laughing Englishwomen ; or a grave 
provincial sheykh all in black, riding a handsome bay Arab, 
demi-sang ; or an Egyptian gentleman in European dress and 
Turkish fez, driven by an English groom in an English phae- 
ton. Before him, wand in hand, bare-legged, eager-eyed, in 
Greek skull-cap and gorgeous gold-embroidered waistcoat and 
fluttering white tunic, flies a native Sais, or running foot- 
man. No person of position drives in Cairo without one or 
two of these attendants. The Sai's (strong, light, and beauti- 
ful, like John of Bologna's Mercury) are said to die young. 
The pace kills them. Next passes a lemonade-seller, with 
his tin jar in one hand, and his decanter and brass cups in 
the other ; or an itinerant slipper- vendor with a bunch of red 



18 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

and yellow morocco shoes dangling at the end of a long pole, 
or a London-built miniature brougham containing two ladies 
in transparent Turkish veils, preceded by a Nubian outrider 
in semi-military livery ; or, perhaps, a train of camels, ill- 
tempered and supercilious, craning their scrannel necks above 
the crowd, and laden with canvas bales scrawled over with 
Arabic addresses. 

But the Egyptian, Arab, and Turkish merchants, whether 
mingling in the general tide or sitting on their counters, are 
the most picturesque personages in all this busy scene. They 
wear ample turbans, for the most part white ; long vests of 
striped Syrian silk reaching to the feet; and an outer robe of 
braided cloth or cashmere. The vest is confined round the 
waist by a rich sash ; and the outer robe, or gibbeh, is generally 
of some beautiful degraded color, such as maize, mulberry, 
olive, peach, sea-green, salmon-pink, sienna-brown, and the 
like. That these stately beings should vulgarly buy and sell, 
instead of reposing all their lives on luxurious divans and 
being waited upon by beautiful Circassians, seems altogether 
contrary to tlie eternal fitness of things. Here, for instance, 
is a Grand Vizier in a gorgeous white and amber satin vest, 
who condescends to retail pipe-bowls, — dull red clay pipe- 
bowls of all sizes and prices. He sells nothing else, and has 
not only a pile of them on the counter, but a binful at the 
back of his shop. They are made at Siout in Upper Egypt, 
and may be bought at the Algerine shops in London almost 
as cheaply as in Cairo. Another majestic Pasha deals in 
brass and copper vessels, drinking-cups, basins, ewers, trays, 
incense-burners, chafing-dishes, and the like ; some of which 
are exquisitely engraved with Arabesque patterns or sen- 
tences from the poets. A third sells silk from the looms of 
Lebanon, and gold and silver tissues from Damascus. Others, 
again, sell old arms, old porcelain, old embroideries, second- 
hand prayer-carpets, and quaint little stools and cabinets of 
ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Here, too, the tobacco- 
merchant sits behind a huge cake of Latakia as big as his own 
body ; and the sponge-merchant smokes his long chibouk in 
% bower of sponges. 

Most amusing of all, however, are those bazaars in which 
each trade occupies its separate quarter. You pass through 
an old stone gateway or down a narrow turning, and find your- 
self amid a colony of saddlers stitching, hammering, punch- 
ing, riveting. You walk up one alley and down another, 
between shop-fronts hung round with tasselled head-gear and 



CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



19 




TUNIS MARKET, CAIUU. 



20 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

hump-backed saddles of all qualities and colours. Here are 
ladies' saddles, military saddles, donkey-saddles, and saddles 
for great officers of state ; saddles covered with red leather, 
with crimson and violet velvet, with maroon, and grey, and 
purple cloth ; saddles embroidered with gold and silver, 
studded with brass-headed nails, or trimmed with braid. 

Another turn or two, and you are in the slipper bazaar, 
walking down avenues of red and yellow morocco slippers ; 
the former of home manufacture, the latter from Tunis. 
Here are slippers with pointed toes, turned-up toes, and toes 
as round and flat as horse-shoes ; walking slippers with thick 
soles, and soft yellow slippers to be worn as inside socks, 
which have no soles at all. These absurd little scarlet blu- 
chers with tassels are for little boys ; the brown morocco shoes 
are for grooms ; the velvet slippers embroidered with gold 
and beads and seed-pearls are for wealthy hareems, and are 
sold at prices varying from five shillings to five pounds the 
pair. 

The carpet bazaar is of considerable extent, and consists 
of a network of alleys and counter-alleys opening off to the. 
right of the Muski, which is the Regent Street of Cairo. 
The houses in most of these alleys are rich in antique lattice- 
windows and Saracenic doorways. One little square is tapes- 
tried all round with Persian and Syrian rugs, Damascus 
saddle-bags, and Turkish prayer-carpets'. The merchants sit 
and smoke in the midst of their goods ; and up in one corner 
an old " Kahwagee," or coffee-seller, plies his humble trade. 
He has set up his little stove and hanging-shelf beside the 
doorway of a dilapidated Khan, the walls of which are faced 
with Arabesque panellings in old carved stone. It is one of 
the most picturesque " bits " in Cairo. The striped carpets 
of Tunis ; the dim grey and blue, or grey and red fabrics of 
Algiers ; the shaggy rugs of Laodicea and Smyrna ; the rich 
blues and greens and subdued reds of Turkey ; and the won- 
derfully varied, harmonious patterns of Persia, have each 
their local habitation in the neighbouring alleys. One is never 
tired of traversing these half-lighted avenues all aglow with 
gorgeous color and peopled with figures that come and go like 
the actors in some Christmas piece of Oriental pageantry. 

In the Khan Khaleel, the place of the gold and silver 
smiths' bazaar, there is found, on the contrary, scarcely any 
display of goods for sale. The alleys are so narrow in this 
part that two persons can with difficulty walk in them 
abreast ; and the shops, tinier than ever, are mere cupboards 



CAIRO AND THE GEE AT PYRAMID. 



21 



with about three feet of frontage. The back of each cup- 
board is fitted with tiers of little drawers and pigeon-holes, 
and in front is a kind of matted stone step, called a mastabah, 
which serves for seat and counter. The customer sits on the 




CARPET BAZAAE, CAIRO. 

edge of the mastabah ; the merchant squats, cross-legged, 
inside. In this position he can, without rising, take out 
drawer after drawer ; and thus the space between the two 
becomes piled with gold and silver ornaments. These differ 
from each other only in the metal, the patterns being identi- 
cal ; and they are sold by weight, witli a due margin for 



22 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

profit. In dealing with strangers who do not understand the 
Egyptian system of weights, silver articles are commonly 
weighed against rupees or five-franc pieces, and gold articles 
against napoleons or sovereigns. Tlie ornaments made in 
Cairo consist chiefly of chains and earrings, anklets, bangles, 
necklaces strung with coins or tusk-shaped pendants, amulet- 
cases of filigree or repousse work, and penannular bracelets 
of rude execution, but rich and ancient designs. As for the 
merchants, their civility and patience are inexhaustible. 
One may turn over their whole stock, try on all their brace- 
lets, go away again and again without buying, and yet be 
always welcomed and dismissed with smiles. L. and the 
Writer spent many an hour practising Arabic in the Khan 
Khaleel, without, it is to be feared, a corresponding degree 
of benefit to the merchants. 

There are many other special bazaars in Cairo, as the Sweet- 
meat Bazaar ; the Hardware Bazaar ; the Tobacco Bazaar ; 
the Sword-mounters' and Coppersmiths' Bazaars ; the Moorish 
Bazaar, where fez caps, burnouses, and Barbary goods are 
sold ; and some extensive bazaars for the sale of English and 
French muslins, and Manchester cotton goods ; but these last 
are, for the most part, of inferior interest. Among certain 
fabrics manufactured in England expressly for the Eastern 
market, we observed a most hideous printed muslin repre- 
senting small black devils capering over a yellow ground, 
and we learned that it was much in favor for children's 
dresses. 

But the bazaars, however picturesque, are far from being 
the only sights of Cairo. There are mosques in plenty ; 
grand old Saracenic gates ; ancient Coptic churches ; the 
museum of Egyptian antiquities ; and, within driving dis- 
tance, the tombs of the Caliphs, Heliopolis, the Pyramids, 
and the Sphinx. To remember in what order the present 
travellers saw these things would now be impossible ; for 
they lived in a dream, and were at first too bewildered to 
catalogue tlieir impressions very methodically. Some places 
they were for the present obliged to dismiss with only a pass- 
ing glance ; others had to be Avholly deferred till their return 
to Cairo. 

In the meanwhile, our first business was to look at daha- 
beeyahs ; and the looking at dahabeeyahs compelled us con- 
stantly to turn our steps and our thoughts in the direction of 
Boulak — a desolate place by the river, where some two or 
three hundred Nile-boats lay moored for hire. Now, most 



CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 23 

persons know something of the miseries of honse-liunting; 
but only those who have experienced them know liow 
much keener are the miseries of dahabeeyah-hunting. It is 
more bewildering and more fatiguing, and is beset by its own 
special and peculiar difficulties. The boats, in the first place, 
are built on the same plan, which is not the case with houses ; 
and except as they run bigger or smaller, cleaner or dirtier, 
are as like each other as twin oysters. The same may be 
said of their captains, with the same differences ; for to a 
person who has been only a few days in Egypt, one black or 
copper-coloured man is exactly like every other black or cop- 
per-coloured man. Then each Reis, or captain, displays the 
certificates given to him by former travellers ; and these 
certificates, being apparently in active circulation, have a 
mysterious way of turning up again and again on board 
different boats and in the hands of different claimants. Nor 
is this all. Dahabeeyahs are given to changing their places, 
which houses do not do ; so that the boat which lay 3^ester- 
day alongside the eastern bank may be over at the western 
bank to-day, or hidden in the midst of a dozen others half 
a mile lower down the river. All this is very perplexing ; 
yet it is as nothing compared with the state of confusion one 
gets into when attempting to weigh the advantages or dis- 
advantages of boats with six cabins and boats with eight ; 
boats provided with canteen, and boats without ; boats that 
can pass the cataract, and boats that can't ; boats that are 
only twice as dear as they ought to be, and boats with 
that defect five or six times multiplied. Their names, again, 
— Ghazal, Sarawa, Fostat, Dongola, — unlike any names one 
has ever heard before, afford as yet no kind of help to the 
memory. Neither do the names of their captains ; for they 
are all Mohammeds or Hassans. Neither do their prices; 
for they vary from day to day, according to the state of the 
market as shown by the returns of arrivals at the principal 
hotels. 

Add to all this the fact that no Reis speaks anything but Ara- 
bic, and that every word of inquiry or negotiation has to be 
filtered, more or less inaccurately, through a dragoman, and 
then perhaps those who have not yet tried this variety of the 
pleasures of the chase may be able to form some notion of 
the weary, hopeless, puzzling work which lies before the da- 
habeeyah hunter in Cairo. 

Thus it came to pass that, for the first ten days or so, some 
three or four hours had to be devoted every morning to the 



24 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

business of the boats ; at the end of which time we were no 
nearer a conclusion than at first. The small boats were too 
small for either comfort or safety, especially in what Nile- 
travellers call " a big wind." The medium-sized boats (which 
lie under the suspicion of being used in summer for the 
transport of cargo) were for the most part of doubtful cleanli- 
ness. The largest boats, which alone seemed unexception- 
able, contained from eight to ten cabins, besides two saloons, 
and were obviously too large for a party consisting of only 
L., the Writer, and a maid. And all were exorbitantly dear. 
Encompassed by these manifold difficulties ; listening now 
to this and now to that person's opinion ; deliberating, hag- 
gling, comparing, hesitating, we vibrated daily between 
Boulak and Cairo, and led a miserable life. Meanwhile, how- 
ever, we met some former acquaintances ; made some new 
ones ; and when not too tired or down-hearted, saw what we 
could of the sights of Cairo — which helped a little to soften 
the asperities of our lot. 

One of our first excursions was, of course, to the Pyramids, 
which lie within an hour and a half's easy drive from the 
hotel door. We started immediately after an early luncheon, 
followed an excellent road all the way, and Avere back in time 
for dinner at half-past six. But it must be understood that 
we did not go to see the Pyramids. We went only to look 
at them. Later on (having meanwhile been up the Nile and 
back, and gone through months of training), we came again, 
not only with due leisure, but also with some practical un- 
derstanding of the manifold phases through which the arts 
and architecture of Egypt had passed since those far-off days 
of Cheops and Chephren. Then, only, we can be said to 
have seen the Pyramids ; and till we arrived at that stage 
of our pilgrimage, it will be well to defer everything like a 
detailed account of them or their surroundings. Of this first 
brief visit, enough therefore a brief record. 

The first glimpse that most travellers now get of the Pyra- 
mids is from the window of the railway carriage as they 
come from Alexandria; audit is not impressive. It does not 
take one's breath away, for instance, like a first sight of the 
Alps from the high level of the Neufchatel line, or the out- 
line of the Acropolis at Athens, as one first recognises it from 
the sea. The well-known triangular forms look small and 
shadowy, and are too familiar to be in any way startling. 
And the same, I think, is true of every distant view of them, 
— that is, of every view which is too distant to afford tha 



CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 25 

means of scaling them against other objects. It is only in 
approaching them, and observing how they grow with every 
foot of the road, that one begins to feel they are not so 
familiar after all. 

.But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and 
the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, 
and the Great Pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and ma- 
jesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as sudden 
as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the hori- 
zon. It shuts out all the other Pyramids. It shuts out 
everything but tlie sense of awe and wonder. 

Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of the 
Pyramids, and only their forms, that one had been ac- 
quainted all these years past. Of their surface, their colour, 
their relative position, their number (to say nothing of their 
size), one had hitherto entertained no kind of definite idea. 
The most careful study of plans and measurements, the 
clearest photographs, the most elaborate descriptions, had 
done little or nothing, after all, to make one know the place 
beforehand. This undulating table-land of sand and rock, 
pitted with open graves and cumbered with mounds of 
shapeless masonry, is wholly unlike the desert of - our 
dreams. The Pyramids of Cheops and Chephren are bigger 
than we had expected; the Pyramid of Mycerinus is smaller. 
Here, too, are nine Pyramids, instead of three. They are 
all entered in the plans and mentioned in the guide-books; 
but, somehow, one is unprepared to find them there, and can- 
not help looking upon them as intruders. These six extra 
Pyramids are small and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, 
is little more than a big cairn. 

Even the Great Pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected 
sense of unlikeness. We all know, and have known from 
childhood, that it was stripped of its outer blocks some five 
hundred years ago to build Arab mosques and palaces ; but 
the rugged, rock-like aspect of that giant staircase takes us 
by surprise, nevertheless. Nor does it look like a partial 
ruin, either. It looks as if it had been left unfinished, and 
as if the workmen might be coming back to-morrow morn- 

iiig- 

The colour again is a surprise. Few persons can be aware 
beforehand of the rich tawny hue that Egyptian limestone 
assumes after ages of exposure to the blaze of an Egyptian 
sky. Seen in certain lights, the Pyramids look like piles of 
massy gold. 



26 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Having but one hour and forty minutes to spend on the 
spot, we resolutely refused on this first occasion to be shown 
anything, or told anything, or to be taken anywhere, — 
except, indeed, for a few minutes to the brink of the sand- 
hollow in which the Sphinx lies couchant. We wished to 
give our whole attention, and all the short time at our dis- 
posal, to the Great Pyramid only. To gain some impression 
of the outer aspect and size of this enormous structure, — 
to steady our minds to something like an understanding of 
its age, — was enough, and more than enough, for so brief 
a visit. 

For it is no easy task to realize, however imperfectly, the 
duration of six or seven thousand years ; and the Great Pyra- 
mid, which is supposed to have been some four thousand 
two hundred and odd years old at the time of the birth of 
Christ, is now in its seventh millennary. Standing there 
close against the base of it; touching it; measuring her own 
height against one of its lowest blocks ; looking up all the 
stages of that vast, receding, rugged wall, which leads up- 
ward like an Alpine buttress and seems almost to touch the 
sky, the Writer suddenly became aware that these remote 
dates had never presented themselves to her mind until this 
moment as anything but abstract numerals. Now, for the 
first time, they resolved themselves into something concrete, 
definite, real. They were no longer figures, but years with 
their changes of season, their high and low Niles, their seed- 
times and harvests. The consciousness of that moment will 
never, perhaps, quite wear away. It was as if one had been 
snatched up for an instant to some vast height overlooking 
the plains of Time, and had seen the centuries mapped out 
beneath one's feet. 

To appreciate the size of the Great Pyramid is less diffi- 
cult than to apprehend its age. No one who has walked the 
length of one side, climbed to the top, and learned the di- 
mensions from Murray, can fail to form a tolerably clear 
idea of its mere bulk. The measurements given by Sir Gard- 
ner Wilkinson are as follows: — length of each side, 732 
feet ; perpendicular height, 480 feet 9 inches ; area 535,824 
square feet.-^ That is to say, it stands 115 feet 9 inches 

1 Since the first edition of this hook was issued, the publication of Mr. 
W. M. Flinders Petrie's standard work, entitled The Pyramids and 
Temples of Gizeh, has for the first time placed a thoroughly accurate and 
scientific description of the Great Pyramid at the disposal of stiadents. 
Calculating from the rock-cut sockets at the four corners, and from the 



CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 27 

higher than the cross on the top of Sfc. Paul's, and about 
20 feet lower than Box Hill in Surrey; and if transported 
bodily to London, it would a little more than cover the 
whole area of Lincoln's Inn Fields. These are sufficiently 
matter-of-fact statements, and sufficiently intelligible; but, 
like most calculations of the kind, they diminish rather than 
do justice to the dignity of the subject. 

More impressive by far than the weightiest array of fig- 
ures or the most striking comparisons, was the shadow cast 
by the Great Pyramid as the sun went down. That mighty 
Shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the stony plat- 
form of the desert and over full three-quarters of a mile of 
the green plain below. It divided the sunlight where it fell, 
just as its great original divided the sunlight in the upper 
air; and it darkened the space it covered, like an eclipse. 
It was not without a thrill of something approaching to awe 
that one remembered how this self-same Shadow had gone 
on registering, not only the height of the most stupendous 
gnomon ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage, 
day by day, of more than sixty centuries of the world's 
history. 

It was still lengthening over the landscape as we went 
down the long sand-slope and regained the carriage. Some 
six or eight Arabs in fluttering white garments ran on ahead 
to bid us a last good-bye. That we should have driven over 
from Cairo only to sit quietly down and look at the Great 
Pyramid had filled them with unfeigned astonishment. 
With such energy and despatch as the modern traveller 

true level of the pavement, Mr. Petrie finds that the square of the origi- 
nal base of the structure, in inches, is of these dimensions : — 





Length. 


Difference 
from Mean. 


Azimuth. 


Difference 
from Mean. 


N" 
E 
S 

w 


9069-4 
9067-7 
9069-5 
9068-6 


+ -6 
-1-1 

-f- -7 
— -2 


- 3' 20" 
-3' 57" 

- 3' 41" 

- 3' 54" 


+ 23" 
-14" 
-1- 2" 
-11" 


Mean 


9068-8 


•65 


— 3' 43" 


12" 



For the height, Mr. Petrie, after duly weighing all data, such as the 
thickness of the three casing-stones yet in situ, and the presumed thick- 
ness of those which formerly faced tlie upper courses of the masonry, gives 
from liis observations of the mean angle of the Pyramid, a height from 
base to apex of 5776-0 ± 7-0 inches. See The Pyramids and Temples of 
Gizeh, chap. vi. pp. 37 to 43. [Note to the Second Edition.] 



28 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

uses, we might have been to the top, and seen the temple of 
the Sphinx, and done two or three of the principal tombs in 
the time. 

"You come again!" said they. '' Good Arab show you 
everything. You see nothing this time ! " 

So, promising to return ere long, we drove away ; well 
content, nevertheless, with the way in which our time had 
been spent. 

The Pyramid Bedouins have been plentifully abused by 
travellers and guide-books, but we found no reason to com- 
plain of them now or afterwards. They neither crowded 
round us, nor followed us, nor importuned us in any way. 
They are naturally vivacious and very talkative ; yet the 
gentle fellows were dumb as mutes when they found we 
wished for silence. And they were satisfied with a very 
moderate bakhshish at parting. 

As a fitting sequel to this excursion, we went, I think 
next day, to see the mosque of Sultan Hassan, which is one 
of those mediaeval structures said to have been built with 
the casing-stones of the Great Pyramid. 




C} 



MnsguE or Mehe,met All 



CAIliO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 29 



CHAPTEE II. 

CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 

The mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most beau- 
tiful in Cairo, is also perhaps the most beautiful in the Mos- 
lem world. It was built at just that happy moment when 
Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely to appropriate 
or imitate, had at length evolved an original architectural 
style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and early 
Christian edifices. The mosques of a few centuries earlier 
(as, for instance, that of Tulun, which marks the first depart- 
ure from the old Byzantine model) consisted of little more 
than a courtyard with colonnades leading to a hall supported 
on a forest of pillars. A little more than a century later, 
and the national style had already experienced the begin- 
nings of that prolonged eclipse which finally resulted iu 
the bastard Neo-Byzantine Renaissance represented by the 
mosque of Meheraet Ali. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan, 
built ninety-seven years before the taking of Constantinople, 
may justly be regarded as the highest point reached by Sar- 
acenic art in Egypt after it had used uyj the Greek and 
Roman material of Memphis, and before its newborn origi- 
nality became modified by influences from beyond the Bos- 
pliorus. Its pre-eminence is due neither to the greatness of 
its dimensions nor to the splendour of its materials. It is 
neither so large as the great mosque at Damascus, nor so 
rich in costly marbles as Saint Sophia in Constantinople ; 
but in design, proportion, and a certain lofty grace impossi- 
ble to describe, it surpasses these, and every other mosque, 
whether original or adapted, with which the writer is ac- 
quainted. 

The whole structure is purely national. Every line and 
curve in it, and every inch of detail, is in the best style of 
the best period of the Arabian school. And above all, it was 
designed expressly for its present purpose. The two famous 
mosques of Damascus and Constantinople having, on the 
contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidences of adap- 



30 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

tation. In Saint Sophia, the space once occupied by the 
ligure of the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the 
mosaic-work of the apse, filled in with gold tesserae of later 
date ; while the magnificent gates of the great mosque at 
Damascus are decorated, among other Christian emblems, 
with the sacramental chalice. But the mosque of Sultan 
Hassan, built by En Nasir Hassan in the high and palmy 
days of the Memlook rule, is marred by no discrepancies. 
For a mosque it was designed, and a mosque it remains. 
Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin. 

A number of small streets having lately been demolished 
in this quarter, the approach to the mosque lies across a 
desolate open space littered with debris, but destined to be 
laid out as a public square. With this desirable end in view, 
some half dozen workmen were lazily loading as many camels 
with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting rubbish. If 
they persevere, and the Minister of Public Works continues 
to pay their wages with due punctuality, the ground will 
perhaps get cleared in eight or ten years' time. 

Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great 
steps, which were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, 
we observed a long and apparently fast-widening fissure 
reaching nearly from top to bottom of the main wall of the 
building, close against the minaret. It looked like just 
such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake, 
and, being still new to the East, we wondered the Govern- 
ment had not set to work to mend it. We had yet to learn 
that nothing is ever mended in Cairo. Here, as in Constan- 
tinople, new buildings spring up apace, but the old, no matter 
how venerable, are allowed to moulder away, inch by inch, 
till nothing remains but a heap of ruins. 

Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some 
more steps and along a gloomy corridor, we came to the 
great court, before entering which, however, we had to take 
off our boots and put on slippers brought for the purpose. 
The first sight of this court is an architectural surprise. It 
is like nothing one has seen before, and its beauty equals its 
novelty. Imagine an immense mai-ble quadrangle, open to 
the sky and enclosed within lofty walls, with, at each side, a 
vast recess framed in by a single arch. The quadrangle is 
more than 100 feet square, and the walls are more than 100 
feet high. Each recess forms a spacious hall for rest and 
prayer, and are all matted; but that at the eastern end 
is wider and considerably deeper than the other three, and 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 31 

the noble aroh that encloses it like the proscenium of a 
splendid stage, measures, according to Fergusson, 69 feet 
5 inches in the span. It looks much larger. This prin- 
cipal hall, the floor of which is raised one step at the upper 
end, measures 90 feet in depth and 90 in height. The dais 
is covered with prayer-rugs, and contains the holy niche and 
the pulpit of the preacher. We observed that those who 
came up here came only to pray. Having prayed, they 
either went away or turned aside into one of the other re- 
cesses to rest. There was a charming fountain in the court, 
with a dome-roof as light and fragile-looking as a big bubble, 
at which each worshipper performed his ablutions on coming 
in. This done, he left his slippers on the matting and trod 
the carpeted dais barefoot. 

This was the first time we had seen Moslems at prayer, 
and we could not but be impressed by their profound and 
unaffected devotion. Some lay prostrate, their foreheads 
touching the ground ; others were kneeling ; others bowing in 
the prescribed attitudes of prayer. So absorbed were they, 
that not even our unhallowed presence seemed to disturb 
them. We did not then know that the pious Moslem is as 
devout out of the mosque as in it ; or that it is his habit to 
pray when the appointed hours come round, no matter where 
he may be, or how occupied. We soon became so familiar, 
however, with this obvious trait of Mohammedan life, that 
it seemed quite a matter of course that the camel-driver 
should dismount and lay his forehead in the dust by the 
roadside ; or the merchant spread his prayer-carpet on the 
narrow mastabah of his little shop in the public bazaar ; or 
the boatman prostrate himself with his face to the east, as 
the sun went down behind the hills of the Libyan desert. 

While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the 
intricate Arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custode came 
up with a big key and invited us to visit the tomb of the 
founder. So we followed him into an enormous vaulted hall 
a hundred feet square, in the centre of which stood a plain, 
railed-off tomb, with an empty iron-bound coffer at the foot. 
We afterwards learned that for five hundred years — that is to 
say, ever since the death and burial of Sultan Hassan — this 
coffer had contained a fine copy of the Koran, traditionally 
said to have been written by Sultan Hassan's own hand ; but 
that the Khedive, who is collecting choice and antique 
Arabic MSS., had only the other day sent an order for its 
removal. 



32 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the propor- 
tions of this noble sepulchral hall, the walls of which are 
covered with tracery in low relief incrusted with discs and 
tesserae of turquoise-coloured porcelain ; while high up, in 
order to lead off the vaulting of the roof, the corners are 
rounded by means of recessed clusters of exquisite Arabesque 
woodwork, like pendent stalactites. But the tesserae are 
fast falling out, and most of their places are vacant ; and the 
beautiful woodwork hangs in fragments, tattered and cob- 
webbed, like time-worn banners which the lirst touch of a 
brush would bring down. 

Going back again from the tomb to the courtyard, we 
everywhere observed traces of the same dilapidation. The 
fountain, once a miracle of Saracenic ornament, was fast 
going to destruction. The rich marbles of its basement were 
cracked and discoloured, its stuccoed cupola was flaking off 
piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like wood- 
tracery shredding away by inches. 

Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with pretty 
confidence on the brink of the basin, and having splashed, 
and drunk, and preened its feathers like a true believer at his 
ablutions, flew up to the top of the cupola and sang deli- 
ciously. All else was profoundly still. Large spaces of light 
and shadow divided the quadrangle. The sky showed over- 
head as a square opening of burning solid blue; while here 
and there, reclining, praying, or quietly occupied, a number 
of turbaned figiires were picturesquely scattered over the 
matted floors of the open halls around. Yonder sat a tailor 
cross-legged, making a waistcoat ; near him, stretclied on his 
face at full length, sprawled a basket-maker with his half- 
woven basket and bundle of rushes beside him ; and here, 
close against the main entrance, lay a blind man and his dog ; 
the master asleep, the dog keeping watch. It was, as I have 
said, our first mosque, and I Avell remember the surprise with 
which we saw that tailor sewing on his buttons, and the 
sleepers lying about in the shade. We did not then know 
that a Mohammedan mosque is as much a place of rest and 
refuge as of prayer ; or that the houseless Arab may take 
shelter there by night or day as freely as the birds may build 
their nests in the cornice, or as the blind man's dog may 
share the cool shade with his sleeping master. 

From the mosque of this Memlook sovereign it is but a 
few minutes' uphill drive to the mosque of Mehemet Ali, by 
whose orders the last of that royal race were massacred just 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 33 

sixty-four years ago.^ This mosque, built within the pre- 
cincts of the citadel on a spur of the Mokattam Hills over- 
looking the city, is the most conspicuous object in Cairo. Its 
Attenuated minarets and clustered domes show from every 
point of view for miles around, and remain longer in sight, 
as one leaves, or returns to, Cairo, tiian any other landmark. 
It is a spacious, costly, gaudy, commonplace building, with 
nothing really beautiful about it, except the great marble 
courtyard and fountain. The inside, which is entirely built 
of Oriental alabaster, is carpeted with magnificent Turkey 
carpets and hung with innumerable cut-glass chandeliers, so 
that it looks like a huge vulgar drawing-room from which the 
furniture has been cleared out for dancing. 

The view from the outer platform is, however, magnificent. 
We saw it on a hazy day, and could not therefore distinguish 
the point of the Delta, which ought to have been visible on 
the north ; but we could plainly see as far southward as the 
Pyramids of Sakkarah, and trace the windings of the Nile for 
many miles across the plain. The Pyramids of Ghizeh, on 
their dais of desert rock about twelve miles oif, looked, as 
they always do look from a distance, small and unimpressive ; 
but the great alluvial valley dotted over with mud villages 
and intersected by canals and tracts of palm forest ; the shin- 
ing river specked with sails ; and the wonderful city, all flat 
roofs, cupolas, and minarets, spread out like an intricate 
model at one's feet, were full of interest and absorbed our 
whole attention. Looking down upon it from this elevation, 
it is as easy to believe that Cairo contains four hundred 
mosques, as it is to stand on the brow of the Pincio and 
believe in the three hundred and sixty-five churches of 
modern Rome. 

As we came away, they showed us the place in which the 
Menilook nobles, four hundred and seventy^ in number, were 
shot down like mad dogs in a trap, that fatal first of March 
A.D. 1811. We saw the upper gate which was shut behind 
them as they came out from the presence of the Pasha, and 
the lower gate which was shut before them to prevent their 
egress. The walls of the narrow roadway in which the 

1 Now, seventy-seven years ago ; the first Edition of this book having 
been published thirteen years ago. [Note to Second Edition.] 

2 One only is said to have escaped — a certain Emin Bey, who leaped 
his horse over a gap in the wall, alighted safely in the piazza below, and 
galloped away into the desert. The place of this famous leap continued 
to be shown for many years, but there are no gaps in the wall now, the 
citadel being the only place in Cairo which is kept in thorough repair. 



34 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

slaughter was done are said to be pitted with bullet-marks ; 
but we would not look for them. 

I have already said that I do not very distinctly remember 
the order of our sight-seeing in Cairo, for the reason that we 
saw some places before we went up the river, some after we 
came back, and some (as for instance the Museum at Bou- 
lak) both before and after, and indeed as often as possible. 
But I am at least quite certain that we witnessed a perform- 
ance of howling dervishes, and the departure of the caravan 
for Mecca, before starting. 

Of all the things that people do by way of pleasure, the 
pursuit of a procession is surely one of the most wearisome. 
They generally go a long way to see it ; they wait a weary 
time ; it is always late ; and when at length it does come, it 
is over in a few minutes. The present pageant fulfilled all 
these conditions in a superlative degree. We breakfasted 
uncomfortably early, started soon after half-past seven, and 
had taken up our position outside the Bab en-Nasr, on the 
way to the desert, by half-past eight. Here we sat for 
nearly three hours, exposed to clouds of dust and a burning 
sun, with nothing to do but to watch the crowd and wait 
patiently. All Shepheard's Hotel was there, and every 
stranger in Cairo ; and we all had smart open carriages 
drawn by miserable screws and driven by bare-legged Arabs. 
These Arabs, by the way, are excellent whips, and the screws 
get along wonderfully ; but it seems odd at first, and not a 
little humiliating, to be whirled along behind a coachman 
whose only livery consists of a rag of dirty white turban, a 
scant tunic just reaching to his knees, and the top boots with 
which Nature has provided him. 

Here, outside the walls, the crowd increased momentarily. 
The place was like a fair with provision-stalls, swings, story- 
tellers, serpent-charmers, cake-sellers, sweetmeat sellers, 
sellers of sherbet, water, lemonade, sugared nuts, fresh 
dates, hard-boiled eggs, oranges, and sliced water-melon. 
Veiled, women carrying little bronze Cupids of children 
astride upon the right shoulder, swarthy Egyptians, coal- 
black Abyssinians, Arabs and Nubians of every shade from 
golden-brown to chocolate, fellahs, dervishes, donkey-boys, 
street urchins, and beggars with every imaginable deformity, 
came and went; squeezed themselves in and out among the 
carriages ; lined the road on each side of the great towered 
gateway ; swarmed on the top of every wall ; and filled the air 
with laughter, a Babel of dialects, and those odours of Araby 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 35 

that are inseparable from an Eastern crowd. A harmless, 
unsavoury, good-humoured, inoffensive, throng, one glance 
at which was enough to put to flight all one's preconceived 
notions about Oriental gravity of demeanour ! For the truth 
is that gravity is by no means an Oriental characteristic. 
Take a Mohammedan at his devotions, and he is a model of 
religious abstraction; bargain with him for a carpet, and he 
is as impenetrable as a judge ; but see him in his hours of 
relaxation, or on the occasion of a public holiday, and he is 
as garrulous and full of laughter as a big child. Like a 
child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake 
of noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fire- 
works as the height of human felicity. Now swings and 
fireworks are Arabic for bread and circuses, and our pleb's 
passion for them is insatiable. He not only indulges in them 
upon every occasion of public rejoicing, but calls in their aid 
to celebrate the most solemn festivals of his religion. It 
so happened that we afterwards came in the way of several 
Mohammedan festivals both in Egypt and Syria, and we in- 
variably found the swings at work all day and the fireworks 
going off every evening. 

To-day, the swings outside the Bab en-Nasr were never 
idle. Here were creaking Russian swings hung with little 
painted chariots for the children ; and plain rope swings, 
some of them as high as Haman's gallows, for the men. Eor 
my own part, I know no sight much more comic and incon- 
gruous than the serene enjoyment with which a bearded, 
turbaned, middle-aged Egyptian squats upon his heels on the 
tiny wooden seat of one of these enormous swings, and, hold- 
ing on to the side-ropes for dear life, goes careering up forty 
feet high into the air at every turn. 

At a little before midday, when the heat and glare were 
becoming intolerable, the swings suddenly ceased going, the 
crowd surged in the direction of the gate, and a distant 
drumming announced the approach of the procession. First 
came a string of baggage camels laden with tent-furniture ; 
then some two hundred pilgrims on foot, chanting passages 
from the Koran ; then a regiment of Egyptian infantry, the 
men in a coarse white linen uniform consisting of coat, 
baggy trousers and gaiters, with cross-belts and cartouche- 
boxes of plain black leather, and the red fez, or tarboosh, on 
the head. Next after these came more pilgrims, followed by a 
body of dervishes carrying green banners embroidered with 
Arabic sentences in white and yellow ; then a native cavalry 



36 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

regiment headed by a general and four colonels in magnifi- 
cent gold embroidery and preceded by an excellent military 
band ; then another band and a second regiment of infan- 
try ; then more colonels, followed by a regiment of lancers 
mounted on capital grey horses and carrying lances topped 
with small red and green pennants. After these had gone by 
there was a long stoppage, and then, with endless breaks and 
interruptions, came a straggling irregular crowd of pilgrims, 
chiefly of the fellah class, beating small darabukkehs, or na- 
tive drums. Those about us estimated their number at two 
thousand. And now, their guttural chorus audible long be- 
fore they arrived in sight, ca.me the howling dervishes — a 
ragged, wild-looking, ru£B.anly set. rolling their heads from 
side to side, and keeping up a hoarse incessant cry of "Allah I 
Allah ! Allah ! " Of these there may have been a couple of 
hundred. The sheykhs of the principal orders of dervishes 
came next in order, superbly dressed in robes of brilliant 
colours embroidered with gold, a^id mounted on magnificent 
Arabs. Finest of all, in a green turban and scarlet mantle, 
rode the Sheykh of the Hasaneyn, who is a descendant of 
the Prophet ; but the most important, the Sheykh el Bekree, 
who is a sort of Egyptian Archbishop of Canterbury and 
head of all the dervishes, came last, riding a white Arab with 
gold-embroidered housings. He was a placid-looking old 
man, and wore a violet robe and an enormous red and green 
turban. 

This very reverend personage was closely followed by the 
chief of the carpet-makers' guild — a handsome man sitting 
sidewise on a camel. 

Then happened another break in the procession — an 
eager pause — a gathering murmur. And then, riding a 
gaunt dromedary at a rapid trot, his fat sides shaking, and 
his head rolling in a stupid drunken way at every step, ap- 
peared a bloated, half-naked Silenus, with long fuzzy black 
locks and a triple chin, and no other clothing than a pair of 
short white drawers and red slippers. A shiver of delight 
ran through the crowd at sight of this holy man — the fa- 
mous Sheykh of the Camel (Sheykh el-Gemel), the "great, 
good Priest " — the idol of the people. We afterwards 
learned that this was his twentieth pilgrimage, and that 
he was supposed to fast, roll his head, and wear nothing but 
this pair of loose drawers, all the way to and from Mecca. 

But the crowning excitement was yet to come, and the 
rapture with which the crowd had greeted the Sheykh el- 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 37 

Gemel was as nothing compared with their ecstasy when 
the Mahmal, preceded by another group of mounted officers 
and borne by a gigantic camel, was seen coming through tlie 
gateway. The women held up their children; the men 
swarmed up the scaffoldings of the swings and behind the 
carriages. They screamed ; they shouted ; they waved hand- 
kerchiefs and turbans ; they were beside themselves with 
excitement. Meanwhile the camel, as if conscious of the 
dignity of his position and the splendour of his trappings, 
came on slowly and ponderously with his nose in the air, and 
passed close before our horses' heads. We could not possi- 
bly have had a better view of the Mahmal ; which is nothing 
but a sort of cage, or pagoda, of gilded tracery very richly 
decorated. In the days of the Memlooks, the Mahmal rep- 
resented the litter of the Sultan, and Avent empty like a 
royal carriage at a public funeral ; ^ but we were told that it 
now carried the tribute-carpet sent annually by the carpet- 
makers of Cairo to the tomb of the Prophet. 

This closed the procession. As the camel passed, the 
crowd surged in, and everything like order was at an end. 
The carriages all made at once for the Gate, so meeting the 
full tide of the outpouring crowd and causing unimaginable 
confusion. Some stuck in the sand half-way — our own 
among the number ; and all got into an inextricable block in 
the narrow part just inside the gate. Hereupon the drivers 
abused each other, and the crowd got impatient, and some 
Europeans got pelted. 

Coming back, we met two or three more regiments. The 
men, both horse and foot, seemed fair average specimens, and 
creditably disciplined. They rode better than they marched, 
which was to be expected. The uniform is the same for 
cavalry and infantry throughout the service ; the only differ- 
ence being that the former wear short black riding boots, and 

1 " It is related tliat the Sultan Ez-Zahir Beybars, King of Egypt, was 
the first who sent a Mahmal with the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, in the 
year of the Flight 670 (a.d. 1272) or 675; but this custom, it is generally 
said, had its origin a few years before his accession to the throne. Sheger- 
ed-Durr, a beautiful Turkish female slave, who became tlie favorite wife of 
the Sultan Es-Saleh Negm-ed-Deen, and on the death of his son (with 
whom terminated the dynasty of the house of the Eiyoob) caused herself to 
be acknowledged as Queen of Egypt, performed the pilgrimage in a mag- 
nificent ' hodag,' or covered litter, borne byacamel; and for several suc- 
cessive years her empty ' hddag ' was sent with the caravan, merely for the 
sake of state. Hence, succeeding princes of Egypt sent with each year's 
cara,van of pilgrims a kind of ' hddag ' (which received the name of Mah- 
mal) as an emblem of royalty."— T/ie Modern Egyptians, by E. W. Lane, 
chap. xxiv. London, 1800. 



38 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the latter, Zouave gaiters of white linen. They are officered 
up to a certain point by Egyptians ; but the commanding 
officers and the staff (among whom are enough colonels and 
generals to form an ordinary regiment) are chiefly Europeans 
and Americans. 

It had seemed, while the procession was passing, that the 
proportion of pilgrims was absurdly small when compared 
with the display of military ; but this, which is called the 
departure of the caravan, is in truth only the procession of 
the sacred carpet from Cairo to the camp outside the walls ; 
and the troops are present merely as part of the pageant. 
The true departure takes place two days later. The pilgrims 
then muster in great numbers ; but the soldiery is reduced to 
a small escort. It was said that seven thousand souls went 
out this year from Cairo and its neighbourhood. 

The procession took place on Thursday the 21st day of 
the Mohammedan month of Showwal, which was our 11th of 
December. The next day, Eriday, being the Mohammedan 
Sabbath, we went to the Convent of the Howling Dervishes, 
which lies beyond the walls in a quiet nook between the 
river-side and the part known as Old Cairo. 

We arrived a little after two, and passing through a court- 
yard shaded by a great sycamore, were ushered into a large, 
square, whitewashed hall with a dome-roof and a neatly 
matted floor. The place in its arrangements resembled none 
of the mosques that we had yet seen. There was, indeed, 
nothing to arrange — no pulpit, no holy niche, no lamps, no 
prayer-carpets ; nothing but a row of cane-bottomed chairs 
at one end, some of which were alread}' occupied by certain 
of our fellow-guests at Shepheard's Hotel. A party of some 
forty or fifty wild-looking dervishes were squatting in a cir- 
cle at the opposite side of the hall, their outer kuftans and 
queer pyramidal hats lying in a heap close by. 

Being accommodated with chairs among the other specta- 
tors, we waited for whatever might happen. More dervishes 
and more English dropped in from time to time. The new 
dervishes took off their caps and sat down among the rest, 
laughing and talking together at their ease. The English 
sat in a row, shy, uncomfortable, and silent ; wondering 
whether they ought to behave as if they were in church, and 
mortally ashamed of their feet. Eor we had all been obliged 
to take off or cover our boots before going in, and those who 
had forgotten to bring slippers had their feet tied up in 
pocket-handkerchiefs. 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 39 

A long time went by thus. At last, when the number of 
dervishes had increased to about seventy, and every one was 
tired of waiting, eight musicians came in — two trumpets, 
two lutes, a cocoa-nut fiddle, a tambourine, and two drums. 
Then the dervishes, some of whom were old and white-haired 
and some mere boys, formed themselves into a great circle, 
shoulder to shoulder ; the band struck up a plaintive, dis- 
cordant air; and a grave middle-aged man, placing himself 
in the centre of the ring, and inclining his head at each 
repetition, began to recite the name of Allah. 

Softly at first, and one by one, tlie dervishes took up the 
chant : — " Allah ! Allah ! Allah ! " Their heads and their 
voices rose and fell in unison. The dome above gave back a 
hollow echo. There was something strange and solemn in 
the ceremony. 

Presently, however, the trumpets brayed louder — the 
voices grew hoarser — the heads bowed lower — the name of 
Allah rang out faster and faster, fiercer and fiercer. The 
leader, himself cool and collected, began sensibly accelerat- 
ing the time of the chorus ; and it became evident that the 
performers were possessed by a growing frenzy. Soon the 
whole circle was madly rocking to and fro ; the voices rose 
to a hoarse scream ; and only the trumpets were audible 
above the din. Now and then a dervish would spring up 
convulsively some three or four feet above the heads of the 
others ; but for the most part they stood rooted firmly to 
one spot — now bowing their heads almost to their feet — 
now flinging themselves so violently back, that we, standing 
behind, could see their faces foreshortened upside down ; 
and this with such incredible rapidity, that their long hair 
had scarcely time either to rise or fall, but reniained as if 
suspended in mid-air. Still the frenzy mounted ; still the 
pace quickened. Some shrieked — some groaned — some, 
unable to support themselves any longer, were held up in 
their places by the bystanders. All were mad for the time 
being. Our own heads seemed to be going round at last ; 
and more than one of the ladies present looked longingly to- 
wards the door. It was, in truth, a horrible sight, and needed 
only darkness and torchlight to be quite diabolical. 

At length, just as the fury was at its height and the very 
building seemed to be rocking to and fro above our heads, 
one poor wretch staggered out of the circle and fell writhing 
and shrieking close against our feet. At the same moment, 
the leader clapped his hands ; the performers, panting and 



40 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

exhausted, dropped into a sitting posture ; and tlie first zikr, 
as it is called, came abruptly to an end. Some few, how- 
ever, could not stop immediately, but kept on swaying and 
muttering to themselves ; while the one in the ht, having 
ceased to shriek, lay out stiff and straight, apparently in a 
state of coma. 

There was a murmur of relief and a simultaneous rising 
among the spectators. It was announced that another zikr, 
with a reinforcement of fresh dervishes, would soon begin ; 
but the Europeans had had enough of it, and few remained 
for the second performance. 

Going out, we paused beside the poor fellow on the floor, 
and asked if nothing could be done for him. 

" He is struck by Mohammed," said gravely an Egyptian 
official who was standing by. 

At that moment, the leader came over, knelt down beside 
him, touched him lightly on the head and breast, and whis- 
pered something in his ear. The man was then quite rigid, 
and white as death. We waited, however, and after a few 
more minutes saw him struggle back into a dazed, half-con- 
scious state, when he was helped to his feet and led away by 
his friends. 

The courtyard as we came out was full of dervishes sitting 
on cane benches in the shade, and sipping coffee. The green 
leaves rustled overhead, with glimpses of intensely blue sky 
between ; and brilliant patches of sunshine flickered down 
upon groups of wild-looking, half-savage figures in parti- 
coloured garments. It was one of those ready-made sub- 
jects that the sketcher passes by with a sigh, but which live 
in his memory for ever. 

Erom hence, being within a few minutes' drive of Old 
Cairo, we went on as far as the Mosque of ' Amr — an unin- 
teresting ruin standing alone among the rubbish-mounds of 
the first Mohammedan capital of Egypt. It is constructed 
on the plan of a single quadrangle 225 feet square, sur- 
rounded by a covered colonnade one range of pillars in depth 
on the west (which is the side of the entrance) ; four on the 
north ; three on the south ; and six on the east, which is the 
place of prayer, and contains three holy niches and the pul- 
pit. The columns, 245 in number, have been brought from 
earlier Eoman and Byzantine buildings. They are of various 
]narbles and have all kinds of capitals. Some being origi- 
nally too short, have been stilted on disproportionately high 
bases ; and in one instance the necessary height has been 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 41 

obtained by adding a second capital on the top of the first. 
We observed one column of that rare black and white 
speckled marble of which there is a specimen in the pulpit 
of St. Mark's in Venice ; and one of the holy niches contains 
some fragments of Byzantine mosaics. But the whole 
building seems to have been put together in a barbarous 
way, and Avould appear to owe its present state of dilapida- 
tion more to bad workmanshij) than to time. Many of the 
pillars, especially on the western side, are fallen and broken ; 
the octagonal fountain in the centre is a roofless ruin ; and 
the little minaret at the S. E. corner is no longer safe. 

Apart, however, from its poverty of design and detail, the 
Mosque of 'Amr is interesting as a point of departure in the 
history of Saracenic architecture. It was built by 'Amr Ebn 
el-' As, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, in the twenty-first year 
of the Hegira (a.d. 642), just ten years after the death of 
- Mohammed ; and it is the earliest Saracenic edifice in Egypt. 
We were glad, therefore, to have seen it for this reason, if for 
no other. But it is a barren, dreary place ; and the glare 
reflected from all sides of the quadrangle was so intense that 
we Avere thankful to get away again into the narrow streets 
beside the river. 

Here we presently fell in with a wedding procession con- 
sisting of a crowd of men, a band, and some three or four 
hired carriages full of veiled women, one of whom was pointed 
out as the bride. The bridegroom walked in the midst of the 
men, who seemed to be teasing him, drumming round him, 
and opposing his progress ; while high above the laughter, 
the shouting, the jingle of tambourines and the thrumming of 
darabukkehs, was heard the shrill squeal of some instrument 
that sounded exactly like a bagpipe. 

It was a brilliant afternoon, and we ended our day's work, 
I remember, with a drive on the Shubra road and a glance at 
the gardens of the Khedive's summer palace. The Shubra 
road is the Champs Elysees of Cairo, and is thronged every 
day from four to half-past six. Here little sheds of roadside 
cafes alternate with smart modern villas ; ragged fellaheen 
on jaded donkeys trot side by side Avith elegant attaches on 
high-stepping Arabs ; while tourists in hired carriages, Jew 
bankers in unexceptionable phaetons, veiled hareems in 
London-built broughams, Italian shopkeepers in preposter- 
ously fashionable toilettes, grave sheykhs on magnificent Cairo 
asses, officers in frogged and braided frocks, and English girls 
in tall hats and close-fitting habits followed by the inevitable 



42 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

little solemn-looking English groom, pass and repass, prenecle 
and follow each other, in one changing, restless, heterogeneous 
stream, the like of which is to be seen in no other capital in 
the world. The sons of the Khedive drive here daily, always 
in separate carriages and preceded by four Saises and four 
guards. They are of all ages and sizes, from the Hereditary 
Prince, a pale, gentlemanly-looking young man of four or five 
and twenty, down to one tiny, imperious atom of about six, 
Avho is dressed like a little man, and is constantly leaning out 
of his carriage-window and shrilly abusing his coachman.^ 

Apart, however, from those who frequent it, the Shubra 
road is a really line drive, broad, level, raised some six or 
eight feet above the cultivated plain, closely planted on both 
sides with acacias and sycamore fig-trees, and reaching straight 
away for four miles out of Cairo, counting from the railway 
terminus to the Summer Palace. The carriage-way is about 
as wide as the road across Hyde Park which connects Bays- 
water with Kensington ; and towards the Shubra end, it runs 
close beside the Nile. Many of the sycamores are of great 
size and quite patriarchal girth. Their branches meet over- 
head nearly all the w^y, weaving a delicious shade and 
making a cool green tunnel of the long perspective. 

We did not stay long in the Khedive's gardens, for it was 
already getting late when we reached the gates; but we went 
far enough to see that they were tolerably well kept, not 
over formal, and laid out with a view to masses of foliage, 
shady paths, and spaces of turf inlaid with flower-beds, alter 
the style of the famous Sarntheim and Moser gardens at 
Botzen in the Tyrol. Here are Sont trees {Acacia Nilotica) 
of unusual size, powdered all over with little feathery tufts 
of yellow blossom ; orange and lemon trees in abundance ; 
heaps of little green limes ; bananas bearing heavy pendent 
bunches of ripe fruit ; winding thickets of pomegranates, 
oleanders, and salvias ; and great beds, and banks, and trel- 
lised walks of roses. Among these, however, I observed none 
of the rarer varieties. As for the Pointsettia, it grows in 
Egypt to a height of twenty feet, and bears blossoms of such 
size and colour as we in England can form no idea of. We saw 
large trees of it both here and at Alexandria that seemed 
as if bending beneath a mantle of crimson stars, some of 
which cannot have measured less than twenty-two inches in 
diameter. 

1 The Hereditary Prince, it need scarcely be said, is the present Khedive, 
Tewfik Paslia. [Note to Second Edition.] 



CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 43 

A large Italian fountain in a rococo style is the great sight 
of the place. We caught a glimpse of it through the trees, 
and surprised the gardener who was showing us over by de- 
clining to inspect it more nearly. He could not understand 
why we preferred to give our time to the shrubs and flower- 
beds. 

Driving back presently towards Cairo with a big handful 
of roses apiece, we saw the sun going down in an aureole of 
fleecy pink and golden clouds, the Nile flowing by like a stream 
of liquid light, and a little fleet of sailing boats going up to 
Boulak before a puff of north wind that had sprung up as the 
sun neared the horizon. That puff of north wind, those glid- 
ing sails, had a keen interest for us now, and touched us 
nearly ; because — I have delayed this momentous revelation 
till tlie last moment — because we were to start to-morrow! 

And this is why I have been able, in tlie midst of so much 
tliat was new and bewildering, to remember quite circum- 
stantially the dates, and all the events connected with these 
last two days. They were to be our last two days in Cairo ; 
and to-morrow morning, Saturday the 13th of December, we 
were to go on board a certain dahabeeyah now lying off the 
iron bridge at Boulak, therein to begin that strange aquatic 
life to which we had been looking forward with so many hopes 
and fears, and towards which we liad been steering through so 
many preliminary difficulties. 

But the difficulties were all over now, and everything was 
settled ; though not in the way we had at first intended. For, 
in place of a small boat, Ave had secured one of the largest on 
the river ; and instead of going alone, we had decided to throw 
in our lot with that of three other travellers. One of these 
three was already known to the Writer. The other two, 
friends of the first, were on their way out from Europe, and 
were not expected in Cairo for another week. We knew 
nothing of them but their names. 

Meanwhile L. and the Writer, assuming sole possession of 
the dahabeeyah, were about to start ten days in advance ; it 
being their intention to push on as far as Rlioda (the ultimate 
point then reached by the Nile railway), and there to await 
the arrival of the rest of the party. Now Rhoda (more 
correctly Roda) is just one hundred and eighty miles south of 
Cairo ; and we calculated upon seeing the Sakkarah pyramids, 
the Turra quarries, the tombs of Beni Hassan, and the famous 
grotto of the Colossus on the Sledge, before our fellow- 
travellers should be due. 



44 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

"■ It depends on the wind, you know," said our dragoman, 
with a higubrious smile. 

We knew that it depended on the wind ; but what then ? 
In Egypt, the wind is supposed always to blow from the north 
at this time of the year, and we had ten good days at our 
disposal. The observation was clearly irrelevant. 




.-'Vl. ADahabee-vah 



CAIRO TO BEDBESHAYN. 45 



CHAPTER III. 

CAIRO TO BEDBESHAYN. 

A RAPID raid into some of the nearest shops, for things 
remembered at the last moment — a breathless gathering up 
of innumerable parcels — a few hurried farewells on the 
steps of the hotel — and away we rattle as fast as a pair of 
rawboned greys can carry us. For this morning every 
moment is of value. We are already late ; we expect visit- 
ors to luncheon on board at midday ; and we are to weigh 
anchor at two p.m. Hence our anxiety to reach Boulak 
before the bridge is opened, that we may drive across to the 
western bank against which our dahabeeyah lies moored. 
Hence also our mortification when we arrive just in time to 
see the bridge swing apart, and the first tall mast glide 
through. 

Presently, however, when those on the look-out have 
observed our signals of distress, a smart-looking sandal, or 
jolly-boat, decked with gay rugs and cushions, manned by 
five smiling Arabs, and flying a bright little new Union Jack, 
comes swiftly threading her way in and out among the lum- 
bering barges now crowding through the bridge. In a few 
more minutes, we are afloat. For this is our sandal, and 
these are five of our crew ; and of the three dahabeeyahs 
moored over yonder in the shade of the palms, the biggest by 
far, and the trimmest, is our dear, memorable " Philae." 

Close behind the Philee lies the " Bagstones," — a neat little 
dahabeeyah in the occupation of two English ladies who 
chanced to cross with us in the " Simla" from Brindisi, and of 
whom we have seen so much ever since that we regard them 
by this time as quite old friends in a strange land. I will 
call them the M. B.'s. The other boat, lying off a few yards 
ahead, carries the tricolor, and is chartered by a party of 
French gentlemen. All three are to sail to-day. 

And now we are on board, and have shaken hands with 
the captain, and are as busy as bees ; for there are cabins to 
put in order, flowers to arrange, and a hundred little things 



46 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

to be seen to before the guests arrive. It is wonderful, how- 
ever, what a few books and roses, an open piano, and a sketch 
or two will do. In a few minutes the comfortless hired look 
has vanished, and long enough before the first comers are 
announced, the Philse wears an aspect as cosy and home-like 
as if she had been occupied for a month. 

As for the luncheon, it certainly surprised the givers of 
the entertainment quite as much as it must have surprised 
their guests. Being, no doubt, a pre-arranged display of pro- 
fessional pride on the part of dragoman and cook, it was 
more like an excessive Christmas dinner than a modest mid- 
day meal. We sat through it unflinchingly, however, for 
about an hour and three quarters, when a startling discharge 
of firearms sent us all running upon deck, and created a 
wholesome diversion in our favour. It was the French boat 
signalling her departure, shaking out her big sail, and going 
off triumphantly. 

I fear that we of the Bagstones and Philae — being mere 
mortals and Englishwomen — could not help feeling just a 
little spiteful when we found the tricolor had started first ; 
but then it was a consolation to know that the Frenchmen 
were going only to Assuan. Such is the esprit dn Nil. The 
people in dahabeeyahs despise Cook's tourists ; those who are 
bound for the Second Cataract look down with lofty com- 
passion upon those whose ambition extends only to the First ; 
and travellers who engage their boat by the month hold their 
heads a trifle higher than those who contract for the trip. 
We, who were going as far as we liked and for as long as we 
liked, could afford to be magnanimous. So we forgave the 
Frenchmen, went down again to the saloon, and had coffee 
and music. 

It was nearly three o'clock when our Cairo visitors wished 
us bon voyage and good-bye. Then the M. B.'s, Avho, with 
their nepliew, had been of the party, went back to their own 
boat; and both captains prepared to sail at a given signal. 
For the M. B.'s had entered into a solemn convention to start 
with us, moor with us, and keep with us, if practicable, all the 
way up the river. It is pleasant now to remember that this 
sociable compact instead of falling through as such compacts 
are wont to do, M^as quite literally carried out as far Aboo 
Simbel ; that is to say, during a period of seven weeks' hard 
going, and for a distance of upwards of eight hundred miles. 

At last all is ready. The awning that has all day roofed 
in the upper deck is taken down ; the captain stands at the 



CAIRO TO BEDRESHAYN. 47 

head of the steps ; the steersman is at the hehn ; the drago- 
man has loaded his musket. Is the Bagstones ready ? We 
wave a handkerchief of inquiry — the signal is answered — 
the mooring ropes are loosened — the sailors pole the boat 
off from the bank — bang go the guns, six from the Philse, 
and six from the Bagstones, and away we go, our huge sail 
tilling as it takes the wind ! 

Happy are the Nile travellers who start thus with a fair 
breeze on a brilliant afternoon. The good boat cleaves her 
way swiftly and steadily. Water-side palaces and gardens 
glide by, and are left behind. The domes and minarets of 
Cairo drop quickly out of sight. The mosque of the citadel, 
and the ruined fort that looks down upon it from the moun- 
tain ridge above, diminish in the distance. The Pyramids 
stand up sharp and clear. 

We sit on the high upper deck, which is furnished with 
lounge-chairs, tables, and foreign rugs, like a drawing-room 
in the open air, and enjoy the prospect at our ease. The 
valley is wide here and the banks are flat, showing a steep 
verge of crumbling alluvial mud next the river. Long belts 
of palm groves, tracts of young corn only an inch or two 
above the surface, and clusters of mud huts relieved now and 
then by a little whitewashed cupola or a stumpy minaret, 
succeed each other on both sides of the river, while the hori- 
zon is bounded to right and left by long ranges of yellow 
limestone mountains, in the folds of which sleep inexpressi. 
bly tender shadows of pale violet and blue. 

Thus the miles glide away, and by and by we approach 
Turra — a large, new-looking mud village, and the first of 
any extent that we have yet seen. Some of the houses are 
whitewashed ; a few have glass windows, and many seem to 
be unfinished. A space of white, stony, glaring plain sepa- 
rates the village from the quarried mountains beyond, the 
flanks of which show all gashed and hewn away. One great 
cliff seems to have been cut sheer off for a distance of per- 
haps half a mile. Where the cuttings are fresh, the lime- 
stone comes out dazzling white, and the long slopes of debris 
heaped against the foot of the cliffs glisten like snow-drifts 
in the sun. Yet the outer surface of the mountains is 
orange-tawny, like the Pyramids. As for the piles of rough- 
hewn blocks that lie ranged along the bank ready for trans- 
port, they look like salt rather than stone. Here lies moored 
a whole fleet of cargo boats, laden and lading ; and along the 
tramway that extends from the river-side to the quarries, we 
see long trains of mule-carts coming and going. 



48 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

For all the new buildings in Cairo, the Khedive's palaces, 
the public offices, the smart modern villas, the glaring new 
streets, the theatres, and foot-pavements, and cafes, all come 
from these mountains — just as the Pyramids did, more than 
six thousand years ago. There are hieroglyphed tablets and 
sculptured gi-ottoes to be seen in the most ancient part of the 
quarries, if one were inclined to stop for them at this early 
stage of the journey ; and Champollion tells of two magnifi- 
cent outlines done in red ink upon the living rock by some 
master-hand of Pharaonic times, the cutting of which was 
never even begun. A substantial new barrack and an espla- 
nade planted with sycamore figs bring the straggling village 
to an end. 

And now, as the afternoon wanes, we draw near to a dense, 
wide-spreading forest of stately date-palms on the western 
bank, knowing that beyond them, though unseen, lie the 
mounds of Memphis and all the wonders of Sakkarah. Then 
the sun goes down behind the Libyan hills ; and the palms 
stand out black and bronzed against a golden sky ; and the 
Pyramids, left far behind, look grey and ghostly in the 
distance. 

Presently, when it is quite dusk and the stars are out, we 
moor for the night at Bedreshayn, which is the nearest point 
for visiting Sakkarah. There is a railway station here, and 
also a considerable village, both lying back about half a mile 
from the river ; and the distance from Cairo, which is reck- 
oned at fifteen miles by the line, is probably about eighteen 
by water. 

Such was our first day on the ISTile. And perhaps, before 
going farther on our way, I ought to describe the Philae, and 
introduce Reis Hassan and his crew. 

A dahabeeyah, at the first glance, is more like a civic or 
an Oxford University barge, than anything in the shape of a 
boat Avith which we in England are familiar. It is shallow 
and flat-bottomed, and is adapted for either sailing or row- 
ing. It carries two masts ; a big one near the prow, and a 
smaller one at the stern. The cabins are on deck, and oc- 
cupy the after-part of the vessel ; and the roof of the cabins 
forms the raised deck, or open-air drawing-room already 
mentioned. This upper deck is reached from the lower deck 
by two little flights of steps, and is the exclusive territory 
of the passengers. The lower deck is the territory of the 
crew. A dahabeeyah is, in fact, not very unlike the Noah's 
Ark of our childhood, with this difference — the habitable 



CAIRO TO BEDBESHAYN. 49 

part, instead of occupying the middle of the vessel, is all at 
one end, top-heavy and many-windowed ; while the fore-deck 
is not more than six feet above the level of the water. The 
hold, however, is under the lower deck, and so counterbal- 
ances the weight at the other end. Not to multiply compar- 
isons unnecessarily, I may say that a large dahabeeyah 
reminds one of old pictures of the Bucentaur ; especially 
when the men are at their oars. 

The kitchen — which is a mere shed like a Dutch oven in 
shape, and contains only a cliarcoal stove and a row of stew- 
pans — stands between the big mast and the prow, removed 
as far as possible from the passengers' cabins. In this posi- 
tion the cook is protected from a favourable wind by his 
shed ; but in the case of a contrary wind he is screened by 
an awning. How, under even the most favourable circum- 
stances, these men can serve up the elaborate dinners which 
are the pride of a Nile cook's heart, is sufficiently wonder- 
ful ; but how they achieve the same results when wind- 
storms and sand-storms are blowing, and every breath is 
laden with the tine grit of the desert, is little short of mirac- 
ulous. 

Thus far, all dahabeeyahs are alike. The cabin arrange- 
ments differ, however, according to the size of the boat ; and 
it ]nust be remembered that in describing the Philse, I de- 
scribe a dahabeeyah of the largest build — her total length 
from stem to stern being just one hundred feet, and the 
width of her upper deck at the broadest part little short of 
twenty. 

Our floor being on a somewhat lower level than the men's 
deck, we went down three steps to the entrance door, on 
each side of which was an external cupboard, one serving as 
a store-room and the other as a pantry. This door led into a 
passage out of which opened four sleeping-cabins, two on 
each side. These cabins measured about eight feet in length 
by four and a half in width, and contained a bed, a chair, 
a fixed washing-stand, a looking-glass against the wall, a 
shelf, a row of hooks, and under each bed two large drawers 
for clothes. At the end of this little passage another door 
opened into the dining saloon — a spacious, cheerful room, 
some twenty-three or twenty-four feet long, situate in the 
widest part of the boat, and lighted by four windows on 
each side and a skylight. The panelled walls and ceiling 
were painted in white picked out with gold ; a cushioned 
divan covered with a smart woolen reps ran along each side ; 



50 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

and a gay Brussels carpet adorned the floor. The dining- 
table stood in the centre of the room ; and there was ample 
space for a piano, two little bookcases, and several chairs. 
The window-curtains and portieres were of the same reps as 
the divan, the prevailing colours being scarlet and orange. 
Add a couple of mirrors in gilt frames ; a vase of flowers on 
the table (for we were rarely without flowers of some sort, 
even in Nubia, where our daily bouquet had to be made with 
a few bean blossoms and castor-oil berries) ; plenty of books ; 
the gentlemen's guns and sticks in one corner ; and the hats 
of all the party hanging in the spaces between the windows ; 
and it will be easy to realize the homely, habitable look of 
our general sitting-room. 

Another door and passage opening from the upper end of 
the saloon led to three more sleeping-rooms, two of which 
were single and one double; a bath-room; a tiny back stair- 
case leading to the upper deck ; and the stern cabin saloon. 
This last, following the form of tlie stern, was semicircular, 
lighted by eight windows, and surrounded by a divan. Under 
this, as under the saloon divans, there ran a row of deep 
drawers, which, being fairly divided, held our clothes, wine, 
and books. The entire length of the dahabeeyah being 
exactly one hundred feet, I take the cabin part to have oc- 
cupied about fifty-six or fifty-seven feet (that is to say, about 
six or seven feet over the exact half), and the lower deck to 
have measured the remaining forty-three feet. But these 
dimensions, being given from memory, are approximate. 

For the crew there was no sleeping accommodation what- 
ever, unless they chose to creep into the hold among the lug- 
gage and packing-cases. But this they never did. They just 
rolled themselves up at night, heads and all, in rough brown 
blankets, and lay about the lower deck like dogs. 

The Beis, or captain, the steersman, and twelve sailors, the 
dragoman, head cook, assistant cook, two waiters, and the 
boy who cooked for the crew, completed our equipment. 
Beis Hassan — short, stern-looking, authoritative — was a 
Cairo Arab. The dragoman, Elias Talhamy, was a Syrian of 
Beyrout. The two waiters, Michael and Habib, and the head 
cook (a wizened old cordon hleu named Hassan Bedawee) were 
also Syrians. The steersman and five of the sailors were 
from Thebes ; four belonged to a place near Philae ; one came 
from a village opposite Kom Ombo ; one from Cairo, and two 
were Nubians from Assuan. They were of all shades, from 
yellowish bronze to a hue not far removed from black ; and 



CAIRO TO BEDRESHAYN. 51 

though, at the first mention of it, nothing more incongruous 
can well be imagined than a sailor in petticoats and a turban, 
yet these men in their loose blue gowns, bare feet, and white 
muslin turbans, looked not only picturesque, but dressed ex- 
actly as they should be. They were for the most part fine 
young men, slender but powerful, square in the shoulders, 
like the ancient Egyptian statues, with the same slight legs 
and long fiat feet. More docile, active, good-tempered, 
friendly fellows never pulled an oar. Simple and trustful as 
children, frugal as anchorites, they worked cheerfully from 
sunrise to sunset, sometimes towing the dahabeeyah on a rope 
all day long, like barge-horses ; sometimes punting for hours, 
which is the liardest work of all ; yet always singing at their 
task, always smiling when spoken to, and made as happy 
as princes with a handful of coarse Egyptian tobacco, or a 
bundle of fresh sugar-canes bought for a few pence by the 
river-side. We soon came to know them all by name — Me- 
hemet Ali, Salame, Khalifeh, Riskali, Hassan, Musa, and so 
on ; and as none of us ever went on shore without one or two 
of them to act as guards and attendants, and as the poor fel- 
lows were constantly getting bruised hands or feet, and com- 
ing to the upper deck to be doctored, a feeling of genuine 
friendliness was speedily established between us. 

The ordinary pay of a Nile sailor is two pounds a month, 
with an additional allowance of about three and sixpence a 
month for flour. Bread is their staple food, and they make 
it themselves at certain places along the river where there 
are large public ovens for the purpose. This bread, which is 
cut up in slices and dried in the sun, is as brown as ginger- 
bread and as hard as biscuit. They eat it soaked in hot 
water, flavoured with oil, pepper, and salt, and stirred in with 
boiled lentils till the whole becomes of the colour, flavour and 
consistence of thick pea-soup. Except on grand occasions, 
such as Christmas Day or the anniversary of the Flight of 
the Prophet, when the passengers treat them to a sheep, this 
mess of bread and lentils, with a little coffee twice a day, 
and now and then a handful of dates, constitutes their only 
food throughout the journey. 

The Nile season is the Nile sailors' harvest-time. When 
the warm weather sets in and the travellers migrate with the 
swallows, these poor fellows disperse in all directions ; some 
to seek a living as porters in Cairo ; others to their homes in 
Middle and Upper Egypt, where, for about fourpence a day, 
they take hire as laborers, or work at Shaduf irrigation till 



h2 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the Nile again overspreads the land. The Shaduf work is 
hard, and a man has to keep on for nine hours out of every 
twenty-four; but he prefers it, for the most part, to employ- 
ment in the government sugar-factories, where the wages 
average at about the rame rate, but are paid in bread, which, 
being doled out by unscrupulous inferiors, is too often of light 
weight and bad quality. The sailors who succeed in getting 
a berth on board a cargo-boat for the summer are the most 
fortunate. 

Our captain, pilot, and crew were all Mohammedans. The 
cook and his assistant were Syrian Mohammedans. The 
dragoman and waiters were Christians of the Syrian Latin 
church. Only one out of the fifteen natives could write or 
read ; and that one was a sailor named Egendi, who acted as a 
sort of second mate. He used sometimes to write letters for 
the others, holding a scrap of tumbled paper across the palm 
of his left hand, and scrawling rude Arabic characters with 
a reed-pen of his own making. This Egendi, though perhaps 
the least interesting of the crew, was a man of many accom- 
plishments — ■ an excellent comic actor, a bit of a shoemaker, 
and a first-rate barber. More than once, when we happened 
to be stationed far from any village, he shaved his messmates 
all round, and turned them out with heads as smooth as bil- 
liard balls. 

There are, of course, good and bad Mohammedans as there 
are good and bad churchmen of every denomination ; and we 
had both sorts on board. Some of the men were very devout, 
never failing to perform their ablutions and say their prayers 
at sunrise and sunset. Others never dreamed of doing so. 
Some would not touch wine — had never tasted it in their 
lives, and Avould have suffered any extremity rather than 
break the law of their Prophet. Others had a nice taste in 
clarets, and a delicate appreciation of the respective merits 
of rum or whisky punch. It is, howevei", only fair to add 
that we never gave them these things except on special occa- 
sions, as on Christmas Day, or when they had been wading 
in the river, or in some other way undergoing extra fatigue 
in our service. Nor do I believe there was a man on board 
who would have spent a para of his scanty earnings on any 
drink stronger than coffee. Coffee and tobacco are, indeed, 
the only luxuries in which the Egyptian peasant indulges ; 
and our poor fellows were never more grateful than when we 
distributed among them a few pounds of cheap native to- 
bacco. This abominable mixture sells in the bazaars at six- 



CAIRO TO BEDRESIIAYN. 53 

pence the pound, the plant from which it is gathered being 
raised from inferior seed in a soil chemically unsuitable, be- 
cause wholly devoid of potash. 

Also it is systematically spoiled in the growing. Instead 
of being nipped off when green and dried in the shade, the 
leaves are allowed to wither on the stalk before they are 
gathered. The result is a kind of rank hay without strength 
or flavour, which is smoked by only the very poorest class, 
and carefully avoided by all who can afford to buy Turkish 
or Syrian tobacco. 

Twice a day, after their midday and evening meals, our 
sailors were wont to sit in a circle and solemnly smoke a cer- 
tain big pipe of the kind known as a hubble-bubble. This 
liubble-bubble (which was of most primitive make and con- 
sisted of a cocoa-nut and two sugar-canes) was common prop- 
erty ; and, being filled by the captain, went round from hand 
to hand, from mouth to mouth, while it lasted. 

They smoked cigarettes at other times, and seldom went 
on shore without a tobacco-pouch and a tiny book of ciga- 
rette-papers. Pancy a bare-legged Arab making cigarettes ! 
'No Frenchman, however, could twist them up more deftly, or 
smoke them with a better grace. 

A Nile sailor's service expires with the season, so that he 
is generally a landsman for about half the year ; but the cap- 
tain's apointment is permanent. He is expected to live in 
Cairo, and is responsible for his dahabeeyah during the sum- 
mer months, while it lies up at Boulak. Reis Hassan had a 
wife and a comfortable little home on the outskirts of Old 
Cairo, and was looked upon as a well-to-do personage among 
his fellows. He received four pounds a month all the year 
round from the owner of the Philse — a magnificent broad- 
shouldered Arab of about six foot nine, with a delightful 
smile, the manners of a gentleman, and the rapacity of a 
Shylock. 

Our men treated us to a concert that first night, as we lay 
moored under the bank near Bedreshayn. Being told that it 
Avas customary to provide musical instruments, we had given 
them leave to buy a tar and darabukkeh before starting. 
The tar, or tambourine, was pretty enough, being made of 
rosewood inlaid with mother-of-pearl ; but a more barbarous 
affair than the darabukkeh was surely never constructed. 
This primitive drum is about a foot and a half in length, fun- 
nel-shaped, moulded of sun-dried clay like the kullehs, and 
covered over at the top with strained parchment. It is held 



54 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



under the left arm and played like a tom-tom with the fingers 
of the right hand ; and it weighs about four pounds. We 
would willingly have added a double pipe or a cocoa-nut fid- 
dle ^ to the strength of the band, but none of our men could 
play them. The tar and darabukkeh, however, answered the 
purpose well enough, and were perhaps better suited to their 
strange singing than more tuneful instruments. 

We had just finished dinner when they began. First came 
a prolonged wail that swelled, and sank, and swelled again, 
and at last died away. This was the principal singer leading 
off with the keynote. The next followed suit on the third of 




NATIVE CANGIAS. 



the key ; and finally all united in one long, shrill descending 
cry, like a yawn, or a howl, or a combination of both. This, 
twice repeated, preluded their performance and worked them 
up, apparently, to the necessary pitch of musical enthusiasm. 
The primo tenore then led off in a quavering roulade, at the 
end of which he slid into a melancholy chant to which the rest 
sang chorus. At the close of each verse they yawned and 
howled again ; while the singer, carried away by his emotions, 
broke out every now and then into a repetition of the same 
amazing and utterly indescribable vocal wriggle with which he 
had begun. Whenever he did this, the rest held their breath 
in respectful admiration, and uttered an approving " Ah ! " — 
which is here the customary expression of applause. 

1 Arabic — Kemengeh. 



CAIRO TO BEDRESHATN. 65 

We thought their music horrible that first night, I remem- 
ber; though we ended, as I believe most travellers do, by lik- 
ing it. We, however, paid them the compliment of going 
upon deck and listening to their performance. As a night- 
scene, nothing could be more picturesque than this group of 
turbaned Arabs sitting in a circle, cross-legged, with a lantern 
in the midst. The singer quavered ; the musicians thrummed; 
the rest softly clapped their hands to time, and waited their 
turn to chime in with the chorus. Meanwhile the lantern 
lit up their swarthy faces and their glittering teeth. The 
great mast towered up into the darkness. The river gleamed 
below. The stars shone overhead. We felt we were indeed 
strangers in a strange land. 



56 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS. 

Having arrived at Bed.resha_yu after dark and there moored 
for the night, we were roused early next morning by the furi- 
ous squabbling and chattering of some fifty or sixty men and 
boys who, witli a score or two of little rough-coated, depressed- 
looking donkeys, were assembled on the high bank above. 
Seen thus against the sky, their tattered garments fluttering 
in the wind, their brown arms and legs in frantic movement, 
they looked like a troop of mad monkeys let loose. Every 
moment the uproar grew shriller. Every moment more men, 
more boys, more donkeys, appeared upon the scene. It was 
as if some new Cadmus had been sowing boys and donkeys 
broad-cast, and they had all come up at once for our benefit. 

Then it appeared that Talhamy, knowing how eight don- 
keys would be Avanted for our united forces, had sent up to 
the village for twenty-five, intending, with perhaps more 
wisdom than justice, to select the best and dismiss the 
others. The result was overwhelming. Misled by the mag- 
nitude of the order and concluding that Cook's party had 
arrived, every man, bo}^, and donkey in Bedreshayn and the 
neighbouring village of Mitrahineh had turned out in hot 
haste and rushed down to the river ; so that by the time 
breakfast was over there were steeds enough in readiness for 
all the English in Cairo. I pass over the tumult that ensued 
when our party at last mounted the eight likeliest beasts and 
rode away, leaving the indignant multitude to. disperse at 
leisure. 

And now our way lies over a dusty flat, across the railway 
line, past the long straggling village, and through the famous 
plantations known as the Palms of Memphis. There is a 
crowd of patient-looking fellaheen at the little whitewashed 
station, waiting for the train, and the usual rabble of clamor- 
ous water, bread, and fruit sellers. Bedreshayn, though a 
collection of mere mud hovels, looks pretty, nestling in the 
midst of stately date-palms. Square pigeon-towers, embedded 



SAKKABAII AND MEMPHIS. 57 

round the top with layers of wide-mouthed pots and stuck 
with rows of leafless acacia-boughs like ragged banner-poles, 
stand up at intervals among the huts. The pigeons go in and 
out of the pots, or sit preening their feathers on the branches. 
The dogs dash out and bark madly at us, as we go by. The 
little brown children pursue us with cries of ''Bakhshish!" 
The potter, laying out rows of soft, grey, freshly-moulded 
clay bowls and kullehs^ to bake in the sun, stops open- 
mouthed, and stares as if he had never seen a European till 
this moment. His young wife snatches up her baby and 
pulls her veil more closely over her face, fearing the evil 
eye. 

The village being left behind, we ride on through one long 
palm grove after another ; now skirting the borders of a large 
sheet of tranquil back-water ; now catching a glimpse of the 
far-off pyramids of Grhizeh, now passing between the huge 
irregular mounds of crumbled clay which mark the site of 
Memphis. Next beyond these we come out upon a high 
embanked road some twenty feet above the plain, which here 
spreads out like a wide lake and spends its last dark-brown 
alluvial wave against the yellow rocks which define the edge 
of the desert. High on this barren plateau, seen for the first 
time in one unbroken panoramic line, there stands a solemn 
company of pyramids ; those of Sakkarah straight before us, 
those of Dahshur to the left, those of Abusir to the right, and 
the great Pyramids of Ghizeh always in the remotest distance. 

It might be thought there would be some monotony in such 
a scene, and but little beauty. On the contrary, however, 
there is beauty of a most subtle and exquisite kind — tran- 
scendent beauty of colour, and atmosphere, and sentiment ; 
and no monotony either in the landscape or in the forms of 
the pyramids. One of these which we are now approaching 
is built in a succession of platforms gradually decreasing 
towards the top. Another down yonder at Dahshur curves 
outward at the angles, half dome, half pyramid, like the roof 
of the Palais de Justice in Paris. No two are of precisely 
the same size, or built at precisely the same angle ; and each 
cluster differs somehow in the grouping. 

Then again the colouring! — colouring not to be matched 
with any pigments yet invented. The Libyan rocks, like 
rusty gold — the paler hue of the driven sand-slopes — the 

iThe sjoolah, or kuUeh, is a porous water-jar of sun-dried Nile mud. 
These jars are made of all sizes and in a variety of remarkably graceful 
forms, and cost from about one farthing to twopence apiece. 



58 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

warm maize of the nearer Pyramids which, seen from this 
distance, takes a tender tint of rose, like the red bloom on an 
apricot — the delicate tone of these objects against the sky 
— the infinite gradation of that sky, soft and pearly towards 
the horizon, blue and burning towards the zenith — the opal- 
escent shadows, pale blue and violet, and greenish-grey, that 
nestle in the hollows of the rock and the curves of the sand- 
drifts — all this is beautiful in a way impossible to describe, 
and alas ! impossible to copy. Nor does the lake-like plain 
with its palm-groves and corn-flats form too tame a fore- 
ground. It is exactly what is wanted to relieve that glowing 
distance. 

And now, as we follow the zig-zag of the road, the new 
pyramids grow gradually larger ; tlie sun mounts higher ; 
the heat increases. We meet a train of camels, buffaloes, 
shaggy brown sheep, men, women, and children of all ages. 
The camels are laden with bedding, rugs, mats, and crates 
of poultry, and carry, besides, two women with babies and 
one very old man. The younger men drive the tired beasts. 
The rest follow behind. The dust rises after them in a 
cloud. It is evidently the migration of a family of three, if 
not four generations. One cannot help being struck by the 
patriarchal simplicity of the incident. Just thus, with flocks 
and herds and all his clan, went Abraham into the land of 
Canaan close upon four thousand years ago ; and one at least 
of these Sakkarah pyramids was even then the oldest build- 
ing in the world. 

It is a touching and picturesque procession — much more 
picturesque than ours, and much more numerous ; notwith- 
standing that our united forces, including donkey-boys, por- 
ters, and miscellaneous hangers-on, number nearer thirty 
than twenty persons. For there are the M. B.s and their 
nephew, and L. and the Writer, and L.'s maid, and Talhamy, 
all on donkeys ; and then there are the owners of the don- 
keys, also on donkeys ; and then every donkey has a boy ; 
and every boy has a donkey ; and every donkey-boy's donkey 
has an inferior boy in attendance. Our style of dress, too, 
however convenient, is not exactly in harmony with the sur- 
rounding scenery ; and one cannot but feel, as these, draped 
and dusty pilgrims pass us on the road, that we cut a sorry 
figure with our hideous palm-leaf hats, green veils, and white 
umbrellas. 

But the most amazing and incongruous personage in our 
whole procession is unquestionably George. Now George is 



SAKKArAH and MEMPHIS. 59 

an English north-country groom whom the M. B.s have 
brought out from the wilds of Lancashire, partly because he 
is a good shot and may be useful to " Master Alfred " after 
birds and crocodiles ; and partly from a well-founded belief 
in his general abilities. And George, who is a fellow of in- 
finite jest and infinite resource, takes to Eastern life as a 
duckling to the water. He picks up Arabic as if it were his 
mother tongue. He skins birds like a practised taxidermist. 
He can even wash and iron on occasion. He is, in short, 
groom, footman, housemaid, laundry-maid, stroke oar, game- 
keeper, and general factotum all in one. And besides all 
this, he is gifted with a comic gravity of countenance that 
no surprises and no disasters can upset for a moment. To 
see this worthy anachronism cantering along in his groom's 
coat and gaiters, livery-buttons, spotted neckcloth, tall hat, 
and all the rest of it ; his long legs dangling within an inch 
of the ground on either side of the most diminutive of don- 
keys ; his double-barrelled fowling-piece under his arm, and 
that imperturbable look in his face, one would have sworn 
that he and Egypt were friends of old, and that he had been 
brought up on pyramids from his earliest childhood. 

It is a long and shelterless ride from the palms to the 
desert; but we come to the end of it at last, mounting just 
such another sand-slope as that which leads up from the 
Ghizeh road to the foot of the Great Pyramid. The edge of 
the plateau here rises abruptly from the plain in one long 
range of low perpendicular cliffs pierced with dark mouths 
of rock-cut sepulchres, while the sand-slope by which we are 
climbing pours down through a breach in the rock, as an 
Alpine snow-drift flows through a mountain gap from the 
ice-level above. 

And now, having dismounted through compassion for our 
unfortunate little donkeys, the first thing we observe is the 
curious mixture of debris underfoot. At Ghizeh one treads 
only sand and pebbles ; but here at Sakkarah the whole 
plateau is thickly strewn with scraps of broken pottery, 
limestone, marble, and alabaster ; flakes of green and blue 
glaze ; bleached bones ; shreds of yellow linen ; and lumps 
of some odd-looking dark brown substance, like dried-up 
sponge. Presently some one picks up a little noseless head 
of one of the common blue-ware funereal statuettes, and 
immediately we all fall to work, grubbing for treasure — a 
pure waste of precious time ; for though the sand is full of 
debris, it has been sifted so often and so carefully by the 



60 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Arabs that it no longer contains anything worth looking for- 
Meanwhile, one finds a fragment of iridescent glass • — an- 
other, a morsel of shattered vase — a third, an opaque bead 
of some kind of yellow paste. And then, with a shock which 
the present writer, at all events, will not soon forget, we 
suddenly discover that these scattered bones are human — 
that those linen shreds are shreds of cerement cloths — that 
yonder odd-looking brown lumps are rent fragments of what 
once was living flesh ! And now for the first time we real- 
ize that every inch of this ground on which we are standing, 
and all these hillocks and hollows and pits in the sand, are 
violated graves. 

" Ce n'est que le premier pas que coute," We soon became 
quite hardened to such sights, and learned to rummage 
among dusty sepulchres with no more compunction than 
would have befitted a gang of professional body-snatchers. 
These are experiences upon which one looks back afterwards 
with wonder, and something like remorse; but so infectious 
is the universal callousness, and so overmastering is the 
passion for relic-hunting, that I do not doubt we should again 
do the same things under the same circumstances. Most 
Egyptian travellers, if questioned, would have to make a 
similar confession. Shocked at first, they denounce with 
liorror the whole system of sepulchral excavation, legal as 
well as predatory ; acquiring, however, a taste for scarabs 
and funerary statuettes, they soon begin to buy with eager- 
ness the spoils of the dead ; finally they forget all their 
former scruples, and ask no better fortune than to discover 
and confiscate a tomb for themselves. 

Notwithstanding that I had first seen the Pyramids of 
Ghizeh, the size of the Sakkarah group — especially of the 
Pyramid in platforms — took me by surprise. They are all 
smaller than the Pyramids of Khufu and Khafra, and would 
no doubt look sufficiently insignificant if seen with them in 
close juxtaposition ; but taken by themselves they are quite 
vast enough for grandeur. As for the Pyramid in platforms 
(which is the largest at Sakkarah, and next largest to the 
Pyramid of Khafra) its position is so fine, its architectural 
style so exceptional, its age so immense, that one altogether 
loses sight of these questions of relative magnitude. If 
Egyptologists are right in ascribing the royal title hiero- 
glyphed on the inner door of this pyramid to Ouenephes, the 
fourth king of the First Dynasty, then it is the most ancient 
building in the world. It had been standing from five to 



SAKKARAR AND MEMPHIS. 61 

seven hundred years when King Khufu began his Great 
Pyramid at Ghlzeh. It was over two thousand years old 
when Abraham was born. It is now about six thousand 
eight hundred years old according to Manetho and Mariette, 
or about four thousand eight hundred according to the com- 
putation of Bunsen. One's imagination recoils upon the 
brink of such a gulf of time. 

The door of this pyramid was carried off, with other pre- 
cious spoils, by Lepsius, and is now in the museum at Eer- 
lin. The evidence that identifies the inscription is tolerably 
direct. According to Manetho, an Egyptian historian who 
wrote in Greek and lived in the reign of Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus, King Ouenephes built for himself a pyramid at a place 
called Kokhome. Now a tablet discovered in the Serapeum 
by Mariette gives the name of Ka-kem to the necropolis of 
Sakkarah ; and as the pyramid in stages is not only the 
largest on this platform, but is also the only one in which a 
royal cartouche has been found, the conclusion seems obvious. 

When a building has already stood five or six thousand 
years in a climate where mosses and lichens, and all those 
natural signs of age to which we are accustomed in Europe 
are unknown, it is not to be supposed that a few centuries 
more or less can tell upon its outward appearance ; yet to my 
thinking the pyramid of Ouenephes looks older than those 
of Ghtzeh. If this be only fancy, it gives one, at all events, 
the impression of belonging structurally to a ruder architect- 
ural period. The idea of a monument composed of dimin- 
ishing platforms is in its nature more primitive than that 
of a smooth four-sided pyramid. We remarked that the 
masonry on one side — I think on the side facing eastwards 
— was in a much more perfect condition than on either of 
the others. 

Wilkinson describes the interior as " a hollow dome sup- 
ported here and there by wooden rafters," and states that the 
sepulchral chamber was lined with blue porcelain tiles. ^ 
We would have liked to go inside, but this is no longer pos- 
sible, the entrance being blocked by a recent fall of masonry. 

Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the 
house built in 1850 for Mariette's accommodation during the 
excavation of the Serapeum — a labour which extended over 
a period of more than four years. 

1 Some of these tiles are to be seen in the Egyptian department of the 
British Museum. They are not blue, but of a bluish green. For a view 
of the sepulchral chamber, see Maspero's Arche'ologie Eqyptienne, Fig. 
230, p. 266. [Note to the Second Edition.] 



62 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and 
long-lost sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls 
(honoured by the Egyptians as successive incarnations of 
Osiris) inhabited the temple of Apis at Memphis while they 
lived ; and, being mummied after death, were buried in cata- 
combs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, Mariette, 
travelling in the interests of the French Government, dis- 
covered both the temple and the catacombs, being, accord- 
ing to his own narrative, indebted for the clue to a certain 
passage in Strabo, which describes the Temple of Serapis as 
being situate in a district where the sand was so drifted by 
the wind that the approach to it was in danger of being over- 
whelmed ; while the sphinxes on either side of the great 
avenue were already more or less buried, some having only 
their heads above the surface, " If Strabo had not written this 
passage," says Mariette, "it is probable that the Serapeum 
would still be lost under the sands of the necropolis of Sak- 
karah. One day, however (in 1850), being attracted to Sak- 
karah by my Egyptological studies, I perceived the head of a 
sphinx showing above the surface. It evidently occupied its 
original position. Close by lay a libation-table on which was 
engraved a hieroglyphic inscription to Apis-Osiris. Then that 
passage in Strabo came to my memory, and I knew that be- 
neath my feet lay the avenue leading to the long and vainly 
sought Serapeum. Without saying a word to any one, I got 
some workmen together and we began excavating. The be- 
ginning was difficult ; but soon the lions, the peacocks, the 
Greek statues of the Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the 
Temple of Kectanebo ^ rose up from the sands. Thus was 
the Serapeum discovered." 

The house — a slight, one-story building on a space of 
rocky platform — looks down upon a sandy hollow which 
now presents much the same appearance that it must have 
presented when Mariette was first reminded of the fortunate 
passage in Strabo. One or two heads of sphinxes peep up 
here and there in a ghastly way above the sand, and mark 
the line of the great avenue. The upper half of a boy riding 
on a peacock, apparently of rude execution, is also visible. 
The rest is already as completely overwhelmed as if it had 
never been uncovered. One can scarcely believe that only 
twenty years ago, the whole place was entirely cleared at so 

1 Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II were tbe last native Pbaraohs of ancient 
Egypt, and flourished between b.c. 378 and b.c. 340. An earlier temple must 
have preceded the Serapeum built by Nectanebo I. 



SAEKARAH AND MEMPHIS. 63 

vast an expenditure of time and labour. The work, as I have 
already mentioned, took four years to complete. This 
avenue alone was six hundred feet in length and bordered 
by an army of sphinxes, one hundred and forty-one of which 
were found in situ. As the excavation neared the end of 
the avenue, the causeway, which followed a gradual descent 
between massive walls, lay seventy feet below the surface. 
The labour was immense, and the difficulties were innumer- 
able. The ground had to be contested inch by inch. " In 
certain places," says Mariette, " the sand was fluid, so to 
speak, and baffled us like water continually driven back and 
seeking to regain its level." ^ 

If, however, the toil was great, so also was the reward. 
A main avenue terminated by a semicircular platform, 
around which stood statues of famous Greek philosophers 
and poets ; a second avenue at right angles to the first ; the 
remains of the great Teinple of the Serapeum ; three smaller 
temples ; and three distinct groups of Apis catacombs, were 
brought to light. A descending passage opening from a 
chamber in the great Temple led to the catacombs — vast 
labyrinths of vaults and passages hewn out of the solid rock 
on which the Temples were built. These three groups of ex- 
cavations represent three epochs of Egyptian history. The 
first and most ancient series consists of isolated vaults dating 
from the X Vlllth to the XXIInd dynasty ; that is to say, 
from about B.C. 1703 to b.c. 980. The second group, which 
dates from the reign of Sheshonk I (XXIInd dynasty, b.c. 
980) to that of Tirhakah, the last king of the XXVth dynasty, 
is more systematically planned, and consists of one long tun- 
nel bordered on each side by a row of funereal chambers. The 
third belongs to the Greek period, beginning with Psam- 
metichus I (XXVIth dynasty, b.c. 665) and ending with the 
latest Ptolemies. Of these, the first are again choked with 
sand ; the second are considered unsafe ; and the third only 
is accessible to travellers. 

After a short but toilsome walk, and some delay outside a 
prison-like door at the bottom of a steep descent, we were 
admitted by the guardian — a gaunt old Arab with a lantern 
in his hand. It was not an inviting looking place within. 
The outer daylight fell upon a rough step or two, beyond 
which all was dark. We went in. A hot, heavy atmosphere 

1 For an excellent and exact account of the Serapeum and the monu- 
ments there discovered, see M. Arthur Rhone's L'Egypte en Petites Jour- 
n^es, of which a new edition is now in the press. [Note to Second Edition.] 



64 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

met lis on the threshold ; the door fell to with a dull clang, 
the echoes of which went wandering away as if into the cen- 
tral recesses of the earth ; the Arab chattered and gesticu- 
lated. He was telling us that we were now in the great ves- 
tibule, and that it measured ever so many feet in this and 
that direction ; but we could see nothing — neither the 
vaulted roof overhead, nor the walls on any side, nor even 
the ground beneath our feet. It was like the darkness of 
infinite space. 

A lighted candle was then given to each person, and the 
Arab led the way. He went dreadfully fast, and it seemed 
at every step as if one were on the brink of some frightful 
chasm. Gradually, however, our eyes became accustomed to 
the gloom, and we found that we had passed out of the ves- 
tibule into the first great corridor. All was vague, mysteri- 
ous, shadowy. A dim perspective loomed out of the dark- 
ness. The lights twinkled and flitted, like wandering sparks 
of stars. The Arab held Ids lantern to the walls here and 
there, and showed us some votive tablets inscribed with rec- 
ords of pious visits paid by devout Egyptians to the sacred 
tombs. Of these they found five hundred when the cata- 
combs were first opened ; but Mariette sent nearly all to the 
Louvre. 

A few steps farther, and we came to the tombs — a suc- 
cession of great vaulted chambers hewn out at irregular dis- 
tances along both sides of the central corridor, and sunk 
some six or eight feet below the surface. In the middle of 
each chamber stood an enormous sarcophagus of polished 
granite. The Arab, flitting on ahead like a black ghost, 
paused a moment before each cavernous opening, flashed the 
light of his lantern on the sarcophagus, and sped away again, 
leaving us to follow as we could. 

So we went on, going every moment deeper into the solid 
rock, and farther from the open air and the sunshine. 
Thinking it would be cold underground, we had brought 
warm wraps in plenty ; but the heat, on the contrary, was 
intense, and the atmosphere stifling. We had not calculated 
on the dryness of the place, nor had we remembered that 
ordinary mines and tunnels are cold because they are damp. 
But here for incalculable ages — for thousands of years prob- 
ably before the Nile had even cut its path through the rocks 
of Silsilis — a cloudless African sun had been pouring its 
daily floods of light and heat upon the dewless desert over- 
head. The place might well be unendurable. It was like a 



SAKE A BAH AND MEMPHIS. 65 

great oven stored with the slowly accumulated heat of cycles 
so remote, and so many, that the earliest periods of Egyptian 
history seem, when compared with them, to belong to yester- 
day. 

Having gone on thus for a distance of nearly two hundred 
yards, we came to a chamber containing the first hiero- 
glyphed sarcophagus we had yet seen ; all the rest being 
polished, but plain. Here the Arab paused; and finding 
access provided by means of a flight of wooden steps, we 
went down into the chamber, walked round the sarcophagus, 
peeped inside by the help of a ladder, and examined the 
hieroglyphs with which it is covered. Enormous as they 
look from above, one can form no idea of the bulk of these 
huge monolithic masses except from the level on which they 
stand. This sarcophagus, which dates from the reign of 
Amasis, of the XXVIth dynasty, measured fourteen feet in 
le'iigth by eleven in height, and consisted of a single block 
of highly-wrought black granite. Four persons might sit in 
it round a small card-table, and play a rubber comfortably. 

From this point the corridor branches off for another two 
hundred yards or so, leading always to more chambers and 
more sarcophagi, of which last there are altogether twenty- 
four. Three only are inscribed ; none measure less than 
from thirteen to fourteen feet in length ; and all are empty. 
The lids in every instance have been pushed back a little 
way, and some are fractured ; but the spoilers have been 
unable wholly to remove them. According to Mariette, the 
place was pillaged by the early Christians, who, besides 
carrying off whatever they could find in the way of gold and 
jewels, seem to have destroyed the mummies of the bulls, 
and razed the great Temple nearly to the ground. Fortu- 
nately, however, they either overlooked, or left as worthless, 
some hundreds of exquisite bronzes and the five hundred 
votive tables before mentioned, which, as they record not 
only the name and rank of the visitor, but also, with few 
exceptions, the name and year of the reigning Pharaoh, 
afford invaluable historical data, and are likely to do more 
than any previously discovered documents towards clearing 
up disputed points of Egyptian chronology. 

It is a curious fact that one out of the three inscribed sar- 
cophagi should bear the oval of Cambyses — - that Cambyses 
of whom it is related that, having desired the priests of 
Memphis to bring before him the God Apis, he drew his 
dagger in a transport of rage and contempt, and stabbed the 



66 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

animal in the thigh. According to Plutarch, he slew the 
beast and cast out its body to the dogs ; according to Herod- 
otus, " Apis lay some time pining in the temple, but at last 
died of his wound, and the priests buried him secretly ; " 
but according to one of these precious Serapeum tablets the 
wounded bull did not die till the fourth year of the reign of 
Darius. So wonderfully does modern discovery correct and 
illustrate tradition. 

And now comes the sequel to this ancient story in the 
shape of an anecdote related by M. About, who tells how 
Mariette, being recalled suddenly to Paris some months after 
the opening of the Serapeum, found himself without the 
means of carrying away all his newly excavated antiquities, 
and so buried fourteen cases in the desert, there to await his 
return. One of these cases contained an Apis mummy which 
had escaped discovery by the early Christians ; and this 
mummy was that of the identical Apis stabbed by Cambyses. 
That the creature had actually survived his wound Avas 
proved by the condition of one of the thigh-bones, which 
showed unmistakable signs of both injury and healing. 

Nor does the story end here. Mariette being gone, and 
having taken with him all that was most portable among 
his treasures, there came to Memphis one whom M. About 
indicates as "a, young and august stranger" travelling in 
Egypt for his pleasure. The Arabs, tempted perhaps by a 
princely bakhshish, revealed the secret of the hidden cases ; 
whereupon the Archduke swept off the whole fourteen, 
despatched them to Alexandria, and immediately shipped 
them for Trieste.-' "Quant au coiipable," says M. About 
who professes to have had the story direct from Mariette, 
" il a iini si tragiquement dans un autre hemisphere que, tout 
bien pese, je renonce a publier son nom." But through so 
transparent a disguise it is not difficult to identify the unfor- 
tunate hero of this curious anecdote. 

Tlie sarcophagus in which the Apis was found remains in 
the vaults of the Serapeum ; but we did not see it. Having 
come more than two hundred yards already, and being by 
this time well-nigh suffocated, we did not care to put two 
hundred yards more between ourselves and the light of day. 
So we turned back at the half distance — having, however, 
first burned a pan of magnesian powder, which flared up 

1 These objects, known as "The Miramar Collection," anql catalogued 
by Pi-ofessoi- Reinisch, are now removed to Vienna. [Note to Second 
Edition.] 



SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS. 67 

wildly for a few seconds ; lit the huge gallery and all its 
cavernous recesses and the wondering faces of the Arabs ; 
and then went out with a plunge, leaving the darkness 
denser than before. 

From hence, across a farther space of sand, we went in all 
the blaze of noon to the tomb of one Ti, a priest and com- 
moner of the Fifth Dynasty, who married with a lady named 
Neferhotep-s, the granddaughter of a Pharaoh, and here 
built himself a magnificent tomb in the desert. 

Of the facade of this tomb, which must originally have 
looked like a little temple, only two large pillars remain. 
Next comes a square courtyard surrounded by a roofless col- 
onnade, from one corner of which a covered passage leads to 
two chambers. In the centre of the courtyard yawns an open 
pit some twenty-five feet in depth, with a shattered sarcopha- 
gus just visible in the gloom of the vault below. All here is 
limestone — walls, pillars, pavements, even the excavated 
debris with which the pit had been filled in when the vault 
was closed for ever. The quality of this limestone is close 
and tine like marble, and so white that, although the walls 
and columns of the courtyard are covered with sculptures of 
most exquisite execution and of the greatest interest, the 
reflected light is so intolerable, that we find it impossible 
to examine them with the interest they deserve. In the 
passage, however, where there is shade, and in the large 
chamber, where it is so dark that we can see only by the 
help of lighted candles, we find a succession of bas-reliefs 
so numerous and so closely packed that it would take half 
a day to see them properly. Ranged in horizontal parallel 
lines about a foot and a half in depth, these extraordinary 
pictures, row above row, cover every inch of wall-space from 
floor to ceiling. The relief is singularly low. I should 
doubt if it anywhere exceeds a quarter of an inch. The sur- 
face, which is covered with a thin film of very fine cement, 
has a quality and polish like ivory. The figures measure an 
average height of about twelve inches, and all are coloured. 

Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. 
His whole life, his pleasures, his business, his domestic 
relations, are brought before us with just that faithful sim- 
plicity which makes the charm of Montaigne and Pepys. A 
child might read the pictured chronicles which illuminate 
these walls, and take as keen a pleasure in them as the 
wisest of archaeologists. 

Ti was a wealthy man, and his wealth was of the agri- 



68 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

cultural sort. He owned flocks and lierds and vassals in 
plenty. He kept many kinds of birds and beasts — geese, 
ducks, pigeons, cranes, oxen, goats, asses, antelopes, and 
gazelles. He was fond of fishing and fowling, and used 
sometimes to go after crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which 
came down as low as Memphis in his time. He was a kind 
husband too, and a good father, and loved to share his pleas- 
ures with his family. Here we see him sitting in state with 
his wife and children, while professional singers and dancers 
perform before them. Yonder they walk out together and 
look on while the farm-servants are at work, and watch the 
coming in of the boats that bring home the produce of Ti's 
more distant lands. Here the geese are being driven home ; the 
cows are crossing a ford ; the oxen are ploughing ; the sower 
is scattering his seed ; the reaper plies his sickle ; the oxen 
tread the grain ; the corn is stored in the granary. There 
are evidently no independent tradesfolk in these early days 
of the world. Ti has his own artificers on his own estate, 
and all his goods and chattels are home-made. Here the 
carpenters are fashioning new furniture for the house ; the 
shipwrights are busy on new boats ; the potters mould pots ; 
tlie metal-workers smelt ingots of red gold. It is plain to 
see that Ti lived like a king within his own boundaries. He 
makes an imposing figure, too, in all these scenes, and, being 
represented about eight times as large as his servants, sits 
and stands a giant among pigmies. His wife (we must not 
forget that she was of the blood royal) is as big as himself ; 
and the children are depicted about half the size of their 
parents. Curiously enough, Egyptian art never outgrew this 
early naivete. The great man remained a big man to the 
last days of the Ptolemies, and the fellah was always a 
dwarf. 1 

Apart from these and one or two other mannerisms, noth- 
ing can be more natural than the drawing, or more spirited 
than the action, of all these men and animals. The most 

lA more exhaustive study of tlie funerary texts has of late revolu- 
tionised our interpretation of these, and similar sepulchral tableaux. The 
scenes they represent are not, as was supposed wlien this book was first 
written, mere episodes in the daily life of the deceased; but are links in 
the elaborate story of his burial and his ghostly existence after death. 
The corn is sown, reaped, and gathered in order tliat it may be ground and 
made into funerary cakes ; the oxen, goats, gazelles, geese, and other live 
stock are destined for sacrificial offerings; the pots, and furniture, and 
household goods are for burying with the mummy in his tomb; and it is 
his " Ka," or ghostly double, tliat takes part in these various scenes, and 
not the living man. [Note to Second Edition.] 



SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS. 69 

difficult and transitory movements are expressed with masterly- 
certitude. The donkey kicks up his heels and brays — the 
crocodile plunges — the wild duck rises on the wing ; and 
the fleeting action is caught in each instance with a truthful- 
ness that no Landseer could distance. The forms, which 
have none of the conventional stiffness of later Egyptian 
work, are modelled roundly and boldly, yet finished with 
exquisite precision and delicacy. The colouring, however, 
is purely decorative ; and being laid on in single tints, with 
no attempt at gradation or shading, conceals rather than 
enhances the beauty of the sculptures. These, indeed, are 
best seen where the colour is entirely rubbed off. The tints 
are yet quite brilliant in parts of the larger chamber ; but in 
the passage and courtyard, which have been excavated only 
a few years and are with difficulty kept clear from day to 
day, there is not a vestige of colour left. This is the work 
of the sand — that patient labourer whose office it is not 
only to preserve but to destroy. The sand secretes and 
preserves the work of the sculptor, but it effaces the work of 
the painter. In sheltered places where it accumulates pas- 
sively like a snow-drift, it brings away only the surface- 
detail, leaving the under colours rubbed and dim. But 
nothing, as I had occasion constantly to remark in the course 
of the journey, removes colour so effectually as sand which 
is exposed to the shifting action of the wind. 

This tomb, as we have seen, consists of a portico, a court- 
yard, two chambers, and a sepulchral vault ; but it also 
contains a secret passage of the kind known as a ''serdab." 
These " serdabs," which are constructed in the thickness 
of the walls and have no entrances, seem to be peculiar to 
t tombs of the Ancient Empire (i. e. the period 
of the Pyramid Kings) ; and they contain 
statues of the deceased of all sizes, in wood, 
limestone, and granite. Twenty statues of 
Ti were here found immured in the serdab 
of his tomb, all broken save one — a spirited 
figure in limestone, standing about seven 
feet high, and now in the museum at 
Boulak. This statue represents a fine young „ . 

, . , , . '- , . . T "^ T ° HEAD OF TI. 

man m a wiaite tunic, and is evidently a 
portrait. The features are regular ; the expression is good- 
natured ; the whole tournure of the head is more Greek than 
Egyptian. The flesh is painted of a yellowish brick tint, and 
the figure stands in the usual hieratic attitude, with the left 




70 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

leg advanced, the hands clenched, and the arms straightened 
close to the sides. One seems to know Ti so well after see- 
ing the wonderful pictures in his tomb, that this charming 
statue interests one like the portrait of a familiar friend. ^ 

How pleasant it was, after being suffocated in the Serapeum 
and broiled in the tomb of Ti, to return to Mariette's de- 
serted house, and eat our luncheon on the cool stone terrace 
that looks northward over the desert ! Some wooden tables 
and benches are hospitably left here for the accommodation 
of travellers, and fresh water in ice-cold kullehs is provided 
by the old Arab guardian. The yards and offices at the 
back are full of broken statues and fragments of inscriptions 
in red and black granite. Two sphinxes from the famous 
avenue adorn the terrace, and look down upon their half- 
buried companions in the sand-hollow below. The yellow 
desert, barren and undulating, with a line of purple peaks 
on the horizon, reaches away into the far distance. To the 
right, under a jutting ridge of rocky plateau not two hundred 
yards from the house, yawns an open-mouthed black-looking 
cavern shored up with heavy beams and approached by a 
slope of debris. This is the forced entrance to the earlier 
vaults of the Serapeum, in one of which was found a mummy 
described by Mariette as that of an Apis, but pronounced by 
Brugsch to be the body of Prince Kha-em-uas, governor of 
Memphis and the favourite son of Rameses the Great. 

This remarkable mummy, which looked as much like a 
bull as a man, was found covered with jewels and gold chains 
and precious amulets engraved with the name of Kha-em-uas, 
and had on its face a golden mask ; all which treasures are 
now to be seen in the Louvre. If it was the mummy of an 
Apis, then the jewels with which it was adorned were prob- 
ably the offering of the prince at that time ruling in Mem- 
phis. If, on the contrary, it was the mummy of a man, then, 
in order to be buried in a place of peculiar sanctity, he 
probably usurped one of the vaults prepared for the god. 
The question is a curious one, and remains unsolved to 
this day ; but it could no doubt be settled at a glance by 
Professor Owen.^ 

1 These statues were not mere portrait-statues; Lut were designed as 
bodily habitations for the incorporeal ghost, or " Ka," which it was sup- 
posed needed a body, food, and drink, and must perish everlastingly if not 
duly supplied with these necessaries. Hence the whole system of burying 
food-offerings, furniture, stuffs, etc, in ancient Egyptian sepulchres. [Note 
to Second Edition.] 

2 The actual tomb of Prince Kha-em-uas has been found at Memphis 
by M. Maspero, within the last three or four years. [Note to Second 
Edition.] 



SAKKABAH AND MEMPHIS. 71 

Far more stai-uling, however, than the discovery of either 
Apis or jewels, was a sight beheld by Mariette on first enter- 
ing that long-closed sepulchral chambei'. The mine being 
sprung and the opening cleared, he went in alone ; and there, 
on the thin layer of sand that covered the floor, he found the 
footprints of the workmen who, 3700 years ^ before, had laid 
that shapeless mummy in its tomb and closed the doors upon 
it, as they believed, for ever. 

And now — for the afternoon is already waning fast — the 
donkeys are brought round, and we are told that it is time 
to move on. We have the site of Memphis and the famous 
prostrate colossus yet to see, and the long road lies all before 
us. So back we ride across the desolate sands ; and with 
a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid m platforms, go 
down the territory of the dead into the land of the living. 

There is a Avonderful fascination about this pyramid. One 
is never weary of looking at it — of repeating to one's self 
that it is indeed the oldest building on the face of the whole 
earth. The king who erected it came to the throne, accord- 
ing to Manetho, about eighty years after the death of Mena, 
the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. All we have of him 
is his pyramid; all we know of him is his name. And these 
belong, as it were, to the infancy of the human race. In 
dealing with Egyptian dates, one is apt to think lightly 
of periods that count only by centuries ; but it is a habit of 
mind which leads to error, and it should be combated. The 
present writer found it useful to be constantly comparing 
relative chronological eras ; as, for instance, in realizing the 
immense antiquity of the Sakkarah pyramid, it is some help 
to remember that from the time when it was built by King 
Ouenephes to the time when King Khufu erected the great 
Pyramid of Ghizeh, there probably lies a space of years 
equivalent to that which, in the history of England, extends 
from the date of the Conquest to the accession of George 
the Second.^ And yet Khufu himself — the Cheops of the 
Greek historians — is but a shadowy figure hovering upon 
the threshold of Egyptian history. 

1 The date is Mariette's. 

2 There was no worship of Apis in the days of King Ouenephes, nor, 
indeed, until the reign of Kaiechos, more than one hundred and twenty- 
years after this time. Bixt at some subsequent period of the Ancient Em- 
pire, his pyramid was appropriated by the priests of Memphis for the mum- 
mies of til e Sacred Bulls. This, of course, was done before any of the 
known Apis-catacombs were excavated. There are doubtless many more 
of these catacombs yet undiscovered, nothing prior to the XVIIIth Dynasty 
having yet been found. 



72 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

And now the desert is left behind, and we are nearing the 
palms that lead to Memphis. We have of course been dip- 
ping into Herodotus — every one takes Herodotus up the 
Nile — and our heads are full of the ancient glories of this 
famous city. We know that Men a turned the course of the 
river in order to build it on the very spot, and that all the 
most illustrious Pharaohs adorned it with temples, palaces, 
pylons, and precious sculptures. We had read of the great 
Temple of Ptah that Kameses the Great enriched with 
colossi of himself ; and of the sanctuary where Apis lived in 
state, taking his exercise in a pillared courtyard where every 
column was a statue ; and of the artificial lake, and the 
sacred groves, and the obelisks, and all the wonders of a city 
which even in its later days was one of the most populous in 
Egypt. 

Thinking over these things by the way, we agree that it 
is well to have left Memphis till the last. We shall appre- 
ciate it the better for having first seen that other city on 
the edge of the desert to which, for nearly six thousand years, 
all Memphis was quietly migrating, generation after genera- 
tion. We know now how poor folk laboured, and how great 
gentlemen amused themselves, in those early days when there 
were hundreds of country gentlemen like Ti, with town- 
houses at Memphis and villas by the Nile. From the Sera- 
peum, too, buried and ruined as it is, one cannot but come 
away with a profound impression of the splendour and power 
of a religion which could command for its myths such faith, 
such homage, and such public works. 

And now we are once more in the midst of the palm-woods, 
threading our way among the same mounds that we passed 
in the morning. Presently those in front strike away from 
the beaten road across a grassy flat to the right ; and the 
next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a muddy 
pool in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened 
and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous pros- 
trate colossus of Kameses the Great, which belongs to the 
British nation, but which the British Government is too 
economical to remove.-' So here it lies, face downward ; 
drowned once a year by the Nile ; visible only when the 
pools left by the inundation have evaporated, and all the 
muddy hollows are dried up. It is one of two which stood 
at the entrance to the great Temple of Ptah ; and by those 

1 This colossus is now raised upon a brick pedestal. [Note to Second 
Edition.] 




RuiNS--MF,MPHrS . 



SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS. 73 

wlio liave gone down into the hollow and seen it from below 
in the dry season, it is reported of as a noble and very- 
beautiful specimen of one of the best periods of Egyptian 
art. 

Where, however, is the companion colossus ? Where is 
the Temple itself ? Where are the pylons, the obelisks, the 
avenues of sphinxes ? Where, in short, is Memphis ? 

The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the bar- 
ren mounds among the palms. 

They look like gigantic dust-heaps, and stand from thirty 
to forty feet above the plain. Nothing grows upon them, 
save here and there a tuft of stunted palm ; and their sub- 
stance seems to consist chiefly of crumbled brick, broken 
potsherds, and fragments of limestone. Some few traces of 
brick foundations and an occasional block or two of shaped 
stone are to be seen in places low down against the foot of 
one or two of the mounds ; but one looks in vain for any 
sign which might indicate the outline of a boundary wall, or 
the position of a great public building. 

And is this all ? 

No — not quite all. There are some mud-huts yonder, iu 
among the trees ; and in front of one of these we find a 
number of sculptured fragments — battered sphinxes, torsos 
without legs, sitting figures without heads — in green, black, 
and red granite. Ranged in an irregular semicircle on the 
sward, they seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half solemn, half 
ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little Arab 
children hiding behind them. 

Near this, in another pool, lies another red granite colossus 

— not the fellow to that which we saw first, but a smaller 
one — also face downwards. 

And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities 

— a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, 
and a name ! One looks round, and tries in vain to realise 
the lost splendours of the place. Where is the Memphis that 
King Mena came from Thinis to found — the Memphis of 
Ouenephes, and Khufu, and Khafra, and all the early kings 
who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert ? 
Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of Strabo, of 'Abd-el- 
Latif ? Where are those stately ruins which, even in the 
middle ages, extended over a space estimated at " half a day's 
journey in every direction " ? One can hardly believe that 
a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how 
it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood — 



74 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, 
and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inunda- 
tion. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance 
to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man 
has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back- 
water, beyond which we see the village of Mitrahineh and 
catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Ghizeh, occupies 
the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. The 
very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of the fellah, 
who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf ^ — just as Sak- 
karah fossilises the name of Sokari, one of the special denom- 
inations of the Memphite Osiris. 

No capital in the world dates so far back as this, or kept 
its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years 
before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one dynas- 
ties ; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek, and the 
Roman ; it was, even in its decadence, second only to Alex- 
andria in population and extent ; and it continued to be in- 
habited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became 
the quarry from Avhich Postat (Old Cairo) was built ; and as 
the new city rose on the eastern bank, the people of Memphis 
quickly abandoned their ancient capital to desolation and 
decay. 

Still a vast field of ruins remained. Abd-el-Latif, writing 
at the commencement of the thirteenth century, speaks with 
enthusiasm of the colossal statues and lions, the enoi-mous 
pedestals, the archways formed of only three stones, the bas- 
reliefs and other wonders that were yet to be seen upon the 
spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes had led him to 
the Nile, might have found some of the palaces and temples 
of Memphis still standing ; and Sandys, who in a.b. 1610 
went at least as far south of Cairo as Kafr el lyat, says that 
" up the River for twenty miles space there was nothing but 
ruines." Since then, however, the very "ruines "have van- 
ished; the palms have had time to grow; and modern Cairo 
has doubtless absorbed all the building material that remained 
from the middle ages. 

Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and 
remember ; but it is a disappointing thing to see. To miss 
it, however, would be to miss the first link in the whole 
chain of monumental history which unites the Egypt of 

1 Tell : Arabic for Mound. Many of these mounds preserve the ancient 
nanies of the cities they entomb ; as Tell Basta (Bubastis) ; Kom Ombo 
(Ombos) ; etc. etc. Tell and Kdm are synonymous terms. 



SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS. 75 

antiquity with the world of to-day. Those melancholy 
mounds and that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only 
that they may take their due place in the picture-gallery of 
one's memory. 

It had been a long day's work, but it came to an end at 
last; and as we trotted our donkeys back towards the river, 
a gorgeous sunset was crimsoning the palms and pigeon- 
towers of Bedreshayn. Everything seemed now to be at 
rest. A buffalo, contemplatively chewing the cud, lay close 
against the path and looked at us without moving. The 
children and pigeons were gone to bed. The pots had baked 
in the sun and been taken in long since. A tiny column of 
smoke went up here and there from amid the clustered huts ; 



MITEAHINEH. 



but there was scarcely a moving creature to be seen. Pres- 
ently we passed a tall, beautiful fellah woman standing grandly 
by the wayside, with her veil thrown back and falling in long 
folds to her feet. She smiled, put out her hand, and mur- 
mured "Bakhshish ! " Her lingers were covered with rings, 
and her arms with silver braclets. She begged because to 
beg is honourable, and customary, and a matter of inveterate 
habit ; but she evidently neither expected nor needed the 
bakhshish she condescended to ask for. 

A few moments more and the sunset has faded, the village 
is left behind, the last half-mile of plain is trotted over. 
And now — hungry, thirsty, dusty, worn out with new 
knowledge, new impressions, new ideas — we are once more 
at home and at rest. 



76 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER V. 

BEDKESHAYN TO MINIEH. 

It is the rule of the Nile to hurry up the river as fast as 
possible, leaving the ruins to be seen as the boat comes back 
with the current ; but this, like many another canon, is by 
no means of universal application. The traveller who starts 
late in the season has, indeed, no other course open to him. 
He must press on with speed to the end of his journey, if he 
would get back again at low Nile without being irretrieva- 
bly stuck on a sand-bank till the next inundation floats him 
off again. But for those who desire not only to see the 
monuments, but to follow, however superficially, the course 
of Egyptian history as it is handed down through Egyptian 
art, it is above all things necessary to start early and to see 
many things by the way. 

For the history of ancient Egypt goes against the stream. 
The earliest monuments lie between Cairo and Siout, while 
the latest temples to the old gods are chiefly found in Nu- 
bia. Those travellers, therefore, who hurry blindly forward 
with or without a wind, now sailing, now tracking, now 
punting, passing this place by night, and that by day, and 
never resting till they have gained the farthest point of their 
journey, begin at the wrong end and see all their sights in 
precisely inverse order. Memphis and Sakkarah and the 
tombs of Beni Hassan should undoubtedly be visited on 
the way up. So should El Kab and Tell el Amarna, and 
the oldest parts of Karnak and Luxor. It it not necessary 
to delay long at any of these places. They may be seen 
cursorily on the way up, and be more carefully studied on 
the way down ; but they should be seen as they come, no 
matter at what trifling cost of present delay, and despite any 
amount of ignorant opposition. Eor in this way only is it 
possible to trace the progression and retrogression of the arts 
from the pyramid-builders to the Csesars ; or to understand 
at the time, and on the spot, in what order that vast and 



BEDRESHATN TO MINIEII. 77 

august processiou of dynasties swept across the stage of 
l-jistory. 

Por ourselves, as will presently be seen, it happened that 
we could carry only a part of this programme into effect ; 
but that part, happily, was the most important. We never 
ceased to congratulate ourselves on having made acquaintance 
with the Pyramids of Ghizeh and Sakkarah before seeing the 
tombs of the kings at Thebes ; and I feel that it is impossible 
to overestimate the advantage of studying the sculptures of 
the tomb of Ti before one's taste is brought into contact with 
the debased style of Denderah and Esneh. We began the 
Great Book, in short, as it always should be begun — at its 
first page; thereby acquiring just that necessary insight 
without which many an after-chapter must have lost more 
than half its interest. 

If I seem to insist upon this point, it is because things 
contrary to custom need a certain amount of insistance, and 
are sure to be met by opposition. No dragoman, for exam- 
ple, could be made to understand the importance of historical 
sequence in a matter of this kind ; especially in the case of 
a contract trip. To him, Khufu, Rameses, and the Ptolemies 
are one. As for the monuments, they are all ancient Egyp- 
tian, and one is just as odd and unintelligible as another. 
He cannot quite understand why travellers come so far and 
spend so much money to look at them ; but he sets it down 
to a habit of harmless cui-iosity — by which he profits. 

The truth is, however, that the mere sight-seeing of the 
Nile demands some little reading and organising, if only to 
be enjoyed. We cannot all be profoundly learned ; but we 
can at least do our best to understand what we see — to get 
rid of obstacles — to put the right thing in the right place. 
For the land of Egypt is, as I have said, a Great Book — 
not very easy reading, perhaps, under any circumstances ; 
but at all events quite difficult enough already without the 
added puzzlement of being read backwards. 

And now our next point along the river, as well as our 
next link in the chain of early monuments, was Beni Hassan, 
with its famous rock-cut tombs of the Xllth dynasty ; and 
Beni Hassan was still more than a hundred and forty-five 
miles distant. We ought to have gone on again directly — 
to have weighed anchor and made a few miles that very 
evening on returning to the boats ; but we insisted on a 
second day in the same place. This, too, with the favourable 
wind still blowing. It was against all rule and precedent. 



78 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The captain shook his head, the dragoman remonstrated, in 
vain. 

" You will come to learn the value of a wind, when you 
have been longer on the Nile," said the latter, with that air 
of melancholy resignation which he always assumed when 
not allowed to have his own way. He was an indolent good- 
tempered man, spoke English fairly well, and was perfectly 
manageable ; but that air of resignation came to be aggravat- 
ing in time. 

The M. B.'s being of the same mind, however, we had our 
second day, and spent it at Memphis. We ought to have 
crossed over to Turra, and have seen the great quarries from 
which the casing-stones of the Pyramids came, and all the 
liner limestone with which the temples and palaces of Mem- 
phis were built. But the whole mountain-side seemed as if 
glowing at a white heat on the opposite side of the river, and 
Ave said we would put off Turra till our return. So we went 
our own way ; and Alfred shot pigeons ; and the Writer 
sketched Mitrahineh, and tlie palms, and the sacred lake of 
Mena; and the rest grubbed among the mounds for treasure, 
finding many curious fragments of glass and pottery, and 
part of an engraved bronze Apis ; and we had a green, tran- 
quil, lovely day, barren of incident, but very pleasant to 
remember. 

The good wind continued to blow all that night ; but fell 
at sunrise, precisely when we were about to start. The river 
now stretched away before us, smooth as glass, and there was 
nothing for it, said E-eis Hassan, but tracking. We had 
heard of tracking often enough since coming to Egypt, but 
without having any definite idea of the process. Coming on 
deck, however, before breakfast, we found nine of our poor 
fellows harnessed to a rope like barge-horses, towing the 
huge boat against the current. Seven of the M. B.'s crew, 
similarly harnessed, followed at a few yards' distance. The 
two ropes met and crossed and dipped into the water together. 
Already our last night's mooring-place was out of sight, and 
the Pj'ramid of Ouenephes stood up amid its lesser brethren 
on the edge of the desert, as if bidding us good-bye. But 
the sight of the trackers jarred, somehow, with the placid 
beauty of the picture. We got used to it, as one gets used 
to everything, in time ; but it looked like slaves' work, and 
shocked our English notions disagreeably. 

That morning, still tracking, we pass the Pyramids of 
Dahshur. A dilapidated brick pyramid standing in the 



BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH. 79 

midst of them looks like an aiguille of black rock thrusting 
itself up through the limestone bed of the desert. Palms 
line the bank and intercept the view ; but we catch flitting 
glimpses here and there, looking out especially for that 
dome-like pyramid which we observed the other day from 
Sakkarah. iSeen in the full sunlight, it looks larger and 
whiter, and more than ever like the roof of the old Palais de 
Justice far away in Paris. 

Thus the morning passes. We sit on deck writing letters ; 
reading; watching the sunny river-side pictures that glide 
by at a foot's pace and are so long in sight. Palm-groves, 
sand-banks, patches of fuzzy-headed dura^ and fields of some 
yellow-flowering herb, succeed each other, A boy plods 
along the bank, leading a camel. They go slowly ; but they 
soon leave us behind. A native boat meets us, floating down 
side-wise with the current. A girl comes to the water's 
edge with a great empty jar on her head, and waits to fill it 
till the trackers have gone by. The pigeon-towers of a mud- 
village peep above a clump of lebbek trees, a quarter of a 
mile inland. Here a solitary brown man, with only a felt 
skull-cap on his head and a slip of scanty tunic fastened 
about his loins, works a shaduf,^ stooping and rising, stoop- 
ing and rising, with the regularity of a pendulum. It is the 
same machine which we shall see by and by depicted in the 
tombs at Thebes ; and the man is so evidently an ancient 
Egyptian, that we find ourselves wondering how he escaped 
being mummified four or five thousand years ago. 

1 Sorghum vulgare. 

2 The Shaduf lias been so well described by the Rev. F. B. Zincke, that 
I cannot do better than quote him verbatim: — "Mechanically, the Sha- 
doof is an application of the lever. In no machine which the wit of man, 
aided by the accumulation of science, has since invented, is the result 
produced so great in proportion to the degree of power employed. The 
lever of the Shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a prop. The pole is at 
light angles to the river. A large lump of clay from the spot is apiiended 
to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a goat-skin bucket. 
This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working it stands on the 
edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water fed from the passing 
stream. When working the machine, he takes hold of the cord by which 
the empty bucket is suspended, and bending down, by the mere weight of 
his shoulders dips it in the water. His effort to rise gives the bucket full 
of water an upward cant, ■which, with the aid of the equipoising lump of 
clay at the other end of the pole, lifts it to a trough into which, as it tilts 
on one side, it empties its contents. What he has done has raised the 
water six or seven feet above the level of the river. But if the river has 
subsided twelve or fourteen feet, it will require another Shadoof to be 
worked in the trough into which tlie water of the first has been brought. 
If the river has sunk still more, a third will be required before it can be 
lifted to the top of the bank, so as to enable it to flow off to the fields that 
require irrigation." — Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive, p. 445 et aeq. 



80 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



By and by, a little breeze springs up. The men drop the 
rope and jump on board — the big sail is set — the breeze 
freshens — and away we go again, as merrily as the day we 




THE SUADUF. 



left Cairo. Towards sunset we see a strange object, like a 
giant obelisk broken off half-way, standing up on the western 
bank against an orange-gold sky. This is the Pyramid of 
Meydum, commonly called the False Pyramid. It looks 
quite near the bank ; but this is an effect of powerful light 
and shadoAV, for it lies back at least four miles from the 
river. That night, having sailed on till past nine o'clock, 
we moor about a mile from Beni Suef, and learn with some 
surprise than a man must be despatched to the governor of 
the town for guards. Not that anything ever happened to 
anybody at Beni Suef, says Talhamy ; but that the place is 
supposed not to have a first-rate reputation. If Ave have 
guards, we at all events make the governor responsible for 



BEBRESHAYN TO MINIER. 81 

our safety and the safety of our possessions. So tlie guards 
are sent for ; and being posted on the bank, snore loudly all 
night long, just outside our windows. 

Meanwhile the wind shifts round to the south, and next 
morning it blows full in our faces. The men, however, track 
up to Beni Suef to a point where the buildings come down to 
the water's edge and the towing-path ceases ; and there we 
lay-to for a while among a fleet of filthy native boats, close 
to the landing-place. 

The approach to Beni Suef is rather pretty. The Khedive 
has an Italian-looking villa here, which peeps up white and 
dazzling from the midst of a thickly -wooded park. The town 
lies back a little from the river. A few coffee-houses and a 
kind of promenade face the landing-place ; and a mosque 
built to the verge of the bank stands out picturesquely 
against the bend of the river. 

And now it is our object to turn that corner, so as to get 
into a better position for starting when the wind drops. 
The current here runs deep and strong, so that we have both 
wind and water dead against us. Half our men clamber 
round the corner like cats, carrying the rope with them; the 
rest keep the dahabeeyah oft" the bank with punting poles. 
The rope strains — a pole breaks — we struggle forward a 
few feet, and can get no farther. Then the men rest awhile ; 
try again ; and are again defeated. So the fight goes on. 
The promenade and the windows of the mosque become 
gradually crowded with lookers-on. Some three or four 
cloaked and bearded men have chairs brought, and sit gravely 
smoking their chibouques on the bank above, enjoying the 
entertainment. Meanwhile the water-carriers come and go, 
filling their goat-skins at the landing-place ; donkeys and 
camels are brought down to drink ; girls in dark blue gowns 
and coarse black veils come with huge water-jars laid side- 
wise upon their heads, and, having filled and replaced them 
upright, walk away with stately steps, as if each ponderous 
vessel were a crown. 

So the day passes. Driven back again and again, but still 
resolute, our sailors, by dint of sheer doggedness, get us 
round the bad corner at last. The Bagstones follows suit a 
little later ; and Ave both moor about a quarter of a mile 
above the town. Then follows a night of adventures. Again 
our guards sleep profoundly ; but the bad characters of Beni 
Suef are very wide awake. One gentleman, actuated no 
doubt by the friendliest motives, pays a midnight visit to the 



82 ONJS THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Bagstones ; but being detected, chased, and fired at, escapes 
by jumping overboard. Our turn comes about two hours 
later, when the Writer, happening to be awake, hears a man 
swim softly round the Philae. To strike a light and frighten 
everybody into sudden activity is the work of a moment. 
The whole boat is instantly in an uproar. Lanterns are 
lighted on deck ; a patrol of sailors is set ; Talhamy loads his 
gun ; and the thief slips away in the dark, like a fish. 

The guards, of course, slept sweetly through it all. Hon- 
est fellows ! They were paid a shilling a night to do it, and 
they had nothing on their minds. 

Having lodged a formal complaint next morning against 
the inhabitants of the town, we received a visit from a sal- 
low personage clad in a long black robe and a voluminous 
white turban. This was the Chief of the Guards. He smoked 
a great many pipes ; drank numerous cups of coffee ; listened 
to all we had to say ; looked wise ; and finally suggested that 
the number of our guards should be doubled. 

I ventured to object that if they slept unanimously, forty 
would not be of much more use than four. Whereupon he 
rose, drew himself to his full height, touched his beard, and 
said with a magnificent melodramatic air: — "If they sleep, 
they shall be bastinadoed till they die ! " 

And now our good luck seemed to have deserted us. Por 
three days and nights the adverse wind continued to blow 
with such force that the men could not even track against it. 
Moored under that dreary bank, we saw our ten days' start 
melting away, and could only make the best of our mis- 
fortunes. Happily the long island close by, and the banks 
on both sides of the river, were populous with sand-grouse ; 
so Alfred went out daily with his faithful George and his 
unerring gun, and brought home game in abundance, while 
we took long walks, sketched boats and camels, and chaffered 
with native women for silver torques and bracelets. These 
torques (in Arabic Tok) are tubular but massive, penannular, 
about as thick as one's little finger, and finished with a hook 
at one end and a twisted loop at the other. The girls would 
sometimes put their veils aside and make a show of bargain- 
ing ; but more frequently, after standing for a moment with 
great wondering black velvety eyes staring shyly into ours, 
they would take fright like a troop of startled deer, and 
vanish with shrill cries, half of laughter, half of terror. 

At Beni Suef we encountered our first sand-storm. It came 
down the river about noon, showing like a yellow fog on the 



BEDBESHAYN TO MlNlEn. 83 

horizon, and rolling rapidly before the wind. It tore the 
river into angry waves, and blotted out the landscajDe as it 
came. The distant hills disappeared first ; then the palms 
beyond the island ; then the boats close by. Another second, 
and the air was full of sand. The whole surface of the plain 
seemed in motion. The banks rippled. The yellow dust 
poured down through every rift and cleft in hundreds of tiny 
cataracts. But it was a sight not to be looked upon with 
impunity. Hair, eyes mouth, ears, were instantly filled, and 
we were driven to take refuge in the saloon. Here, although 
every window and door had been shut before the storm came, 
the sand found its way in clouds. Books, papers, carpets, 
were covered with it ; and it settled again as fast as it was 
cleared away. This lasted just one hour, and was followed 
by a burst of heavy rain ; after which the sky cleared and 
we had a lovely afternoon. From this time forth, we saw no 
more rain in Egypt. 

At length, on the morning of the fourth day after our first 
appearance at Beni Suef and the seventh since leaving Cairo, 
the Avind veered round again to the north, and we once more 
got under way. It was delightful to see the big sail again 
towering up overhead, and to hear the swish of the water 
under the cabin windows ; but we were still one hundred and 
nine miles from Rhoda, and we knew that nothing but an 
extraordinary run of luck could possibly get us there by the 
twenty-third of the month, with time to see Beni Hassan on 
the way. Meanwhile, however, we make fair progress, moor- 
ing at sunset when the wind falls, about three miles north of 
Bibbeh. JSText day, by help of the same light breeze which 
again springs up a little after dawn, we go at a good pace 
between flat banks fringed here and there with palms, and 
studded with villages more or less picturesque. There is 
not much to see, and yet one never wants for amusement. 
Now we pass an island of sand-bank covered with snow-white 
paddy-birds, which rise tumultuously at our approach. Next 
comes Bibbeh perched high along the edge of the precipitous 
bank, its odd-looking Coptic Convent roofed all over with 
little mud domes, like a cluster of earth-bubbles. By and by 
we pass a deserted sugar-factory, with shattered windows 
and a huge, gaunt, blackened chimney, worthy of Birming- 
ham or Sheflield. And now we catch a glimpse of the rail- 
way, and hear the last scream of a departing engine. At 
night, we moor within sight of the factory chimneys and 
hydraulic tubes of Magagha, and next day get on nearly to 
Golosaneh, which is the last station-town before Minieh. 



84 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



It is now only too clear that we must give up all thought 
of pushing on to Beni Hassan before the rest of the party 
shall come on board. We have reached the evening of our 
ninth day ; we are still forty-eight miles from Rhoda ; and 
another adverse wind might again delay us indefinitely on 
the way. All risks taken into account, we decide to put off our 
meeting till the twenty -fourth, and transfer the appointment 
to Minieh ; thus giving ourselves time to track all the way in 
case of need. So an Arabic telegram is concocted, and our 
fleetest runner starts off with it to Golosaneh before the office 
closes for the night. 

The breeze, however, does not fail, but comes back next 
morning with the dawn. Having passed Golosaneh, we come 
to a wide reach in the river, at which point we are honoured 
by a visit from a Moslem Santon of peculiar sanctity, named 
''Holy Sheykh Cotton." Now Holy 
Sheykh Cotton, who is a well-fed, 
healthy-looking young man of about 
thirty, makes his first appearance 
swimming, with his garments twisted 
into a huge turban on the top of his 
head, and only his chin above water. 
Having made his toilet in the small 
boat, he presents himself on deck, 
and receives an enthusiastic wel- 
come. Reis Hassan hugs him — the 
pilot kisses him — the sailors come 
up one by one, bringing little tributes 
of tobacco and piastres which he ac- 
cepts with the air of a Pope receiv- 
ing Peter's Pence. All dripping as 
he is, and smiling like an affable Triton, he next proceeds to 
touch the tiller, the ropes, and the ends of the yards, " in 
order," says Talhamy, " to make them holy ; " and then, with 
some kind of final charm or muttered incantation, he plunges 
into the river again, and swims off to repeat the same per- 
formance on board the Bagstones. 

From this moment the prosperity of our voyage is assured. 
The captain goes about with a smile on his stern face, and 
the crew look as happy as if we had given them a guinea. 
For nothing can go wrong with a dahabeeyah that has been 
" made holy " by Holy Sheykh Cotton. We are certain now 
to have favourable winds — to pass the Cataract without ac- 
cident — to come back in health and safety, as we set out. 




'HOLY SHEYKH COTTON. 



BEDRESHATN TO MINIEH. 85 

But what, it may be asked, has Holy Sheykh Cotton done to 
make his blessing so efficacious ? He gets money in plenty ; 
he fasts no oftener than other Mohammedans ; he has two 
wives ; he never does a stroke of work ; and he looks the 
picture of sleek prosperity. Yet he is a saint of the first 
water ; and when he dies, miracles will be performed at his 
tomb, and his eldest son will succeed him in the business. 

We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a good 
many saints in the course of our Eastern travels ; but I do 
not know that we ever found they had done anything to 
merit the position. One very horrible old man named Sheykh 
Saleem has, it is true, been sitting on a dirt heap near Far- 
shut, unclothed, unwashed, unshaven, for the last half-century 
or more, never even lifting his hand to his mouth to feed 
himself ; but Sheykh Cotton had gone to no such pious 
lengths, and was not even dirty. 

We are by this time drawing towards a range of yellow 
cliffs that have long been visible on the horizon, and which 
figure in the maps as Gebel et Tayr. The Arabian desert 
has been closing up on the eastern bank for some time past, 
and now rolls on in undulating drifts to the water's edge. 
Yellow boulders crop out here and there above the mounded 
sand, which looks as if it might cover many a forgotten 
temple. Presently the clay bank is gone, and a low barrier 
of limestone rock, black and shiny next the water-line, has 
taken its place. And now, a long way ahead, where the 
river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far distance, 
a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the 
Pulley. Perched on the brink of the precipice, it looks no 
bigger than an ant-heap. We had heard much of the fine 
view to be seen from the platform on which this Convent is 
built, and it had originally entered into our programme as a 
place to be visited on the way. But Minieh has to be gained 
now at all costs ; so this project has to be abandoned with a 
sigh. 

And now the rocky barrier rises higher, quarried here and 
there in dazzling gaps of snow-white cuttings. And now the 
Convent shows clearer ; and the cliffs become loftier ; and 
the bend in the river is reached ; and a long perspective of 
flat-topped precipice stretches away into the dim distance. 

It is a day of saints and swimmers. As the dahabeeyah 
approaches, a brown poll is seen bobbing up and doAvn in the 
water a few hundred yards ahead. Then one, two, three 
bronze figures dash down a steep ravine below the Convent 



86 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

walls, and plunge into the river — a shrill chorus of voices, 
growing momentarily more audible, is borne upon the wind — 
and in a few minutes the boat is beset by a shoal of mendi- 
cant monks vociferating with all tlieir might "Ana Christian 
ya Hawadji ! — Ana Christian ya Hawadji! '^ (I am a 
Christian, oh traveller !) As these are only Coptic monks 
and not Moslem santons, the sailors, half in rough play, half 
in earnest, drive them off with punting poles ; and only one 
shivering, streaming object, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, 
is allowed to come on board. He is a fine shapely man, aged 
about forty, with splendid eyes and teeth, a well-formed 
head, a skin the colour of a copper beech-leaf, and a face 
expressive of such ignorance, timidity, and half-savage watch- 
fulness as makes one's heart ache. 

And this is a Copt ; a descendant of the true Egyptian 
stock ; one of those whose remote ancestors exchanged the wor- 
ship of the old gods for Christianity under the rule of Theo- 
dosius some fifteen hundred years ago, and whose blood is 
supposed to be purer of Mohammedan intermixture than any in 
Egypt. Remembering these things, it is imjjossible to look at 
him without a feeling of profound interest. It may be only 
fancy, yet I think I see in him a different type to that of the 
Arab — a something, however slight, which recalls the sculp- 
tured figures in the tomb of Ti. 

But while we are thinking about his magnificent pedigree, 
our poor Copt's teeth are chattering piteously. So we give 
him a shilling or two for the sake of all he represents in the 
history of the world ; and with these, and the donation of 
an empty bottle, he swims away contented, crying again and 
again: — "Ketther-khdyrak Sittdt! Ketther-khdyrak keteer ! " 
(" Thank you, ladies ! thank you much ! ") 

And now the Convent with its clustered domes is passed 
and left behind. The rock here is of the same rich tawny 
hue as at Turra, and the horizontal strata of which it is com- 
posed have evidently been deposited by water. That the 
Nile must at some remote time have flowed here in an 
immensely higher level seems also probable ; for the whole 
face of the range is honeycombed and water-worn for miles 
in succession. Seeing how these fantastic forms — arched, 
and clustered, and pendent — resemble the recessed orna- 
mentation of Saracenic buildings, I could not help wondering 
whether some early Arab architect might not once upon a 
time have taken a hint from some such rocks as these. 

Thus the day wanes, and the level cliffs keep with us all 



BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH. 87 

the way — now breaking into little lateral valleys and culs- 
de-sac in which nestle clusters of tiny huts and green patches 
of lupin; now plunging sheer down into the river; now 
receding inland and leaving space for a belt of cultivated soil 
and a fringe of feathery palms. By and by comes the sun- 
set, when every cast shadow in the recesses of the cliffs turns 
to pure violet ; and the face of the rock glows with a ruddier 
gold ; and the palms on the Avestern bank stand up in solid 
bronze against a crimson horizon. Then the sun dips, and 
instantly the whole range of cliffs turns to a dead, greenish 
grey, while the sky above and behind them is as suddenly 
suffused with pink. When this effect has lasted for some- 
thing like eight minutes, a vast arch of deep blue shade, 
about as large in diameter as a rainbow, creeps slowly up the 
eastern horizon, and remains distinctly visible as long as the 
pink flush against which it is defined yet lingers in the sky. 
Finally the flush fades out ; the blue becomes uniform ; the 
stars begin to show ; and only a broad glow in the west 
marks which way the sun went down. About a quarter of 
an hour later comes the after-glow, when for a few minutes 
the sky is filled with a soft, magical light, and the twilight 
gloom lies warm upon the landscape. When this goes, it is 
night ; but still one long beam of light streams up in the 
tracks of the sun, and remains visible for more than two 
hours after the darkness has closed in. 

Such is the sunset we see this evening as we approach 
Minieh ; and siich is the sunset we are destined to see with 
scarcely a shade of difference at the same hour and under 
precisely the same conditions for many a month to come. 
It is very beautiful, very tranquil, full of wonderful light 
and most subtle gradations of tone, and attended by certain 
phenomena of which I shall have more to say presently ; but 
it lacks the variety and gorgeousness of our northern skies. 
Nor, given the dry atmosphere of Egypt, can it be otherwise. 
Those who go up the Nile expecting, as I did, to see magni- 
ficent Turneresque pageants of purple, and flame-colour, and 
gold, will be disappointed as I was. For your Turneresque 
pageant cannot be achieved without such accessories of cloud 
and vapour as in Nubia are wholly unknown, and in Egypt 
are of the rarest occurrence. Once, and only once, in the 
course of an unusually protracted sojourn on the river, 
had we the good fortune to witness a grand display of the 
kind ; and then we had been nearly three months in the daha- 
beeyah. 



88 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Meanwhile, however, we never weary of these stainless 
skies, but find in them, evening after evening, fresh depths 
of beaiity and repose. As for that strange transfer of colour 
from the mountains to the sky, we had repeatedly observed 
it while travelling in the Dolomites the year before, and had 
always found it take place, as now, at the moment of the 
sun's first disappearance. But what of this mighty after- 
shadow, climbing half the heavens and bringing night with 
it ? Can it be the rising Shadow of the World projected on 
the one horizon as the sun sinks on the other ? I leave the 
problem for wiser travellers to solve. We have not science 
enough amongst us to account for it. 

That same evening, just as the twilight came on, we saw 
another wonder — the new moon on the first night of her 
first quarter ; a perfect orb, dusky, distinct, and outlined all 
round with a thread of light no thicker than a hair. Noth- 
ing could be more brilliant than this tiny rim of flashing 
silver; while every detail of the softly glowing globe within 
its compass was clearly visible. Tycho with its vast crater 
showed like a volcano on a raised map; and near the edge 
of the moon's surface, where the light and shadow met, keen 
sparkles of mountain-summits catching the light and relieved 
against the dusk, were to be seen by the naked eye. Two 
or three evenings later, however, when the silver ring was 
changed to a broad crescent, the unilluminated part was as 
it were extinguished, and could no longer be discerned even 
by help of a glass. 

The wind having failed as usual at sunset, the crew set to 
work with a will and punted the rest of the way, so bringing 
us to Minieh about nine that night. Next morning we found 
ourselves moored close under the Khedive's summer palace 
— so close that one could have tossed a pebble against the 
lattice windows of his Highness's hareem. A fat gate-keeper 
sat outside in the sun, smoking his morning chibouque and 
gossiping with the passers-by. A narrow promenade scantily 
planted with sycamore figs ran between the palace and the 
river. A steamer or two, and a crowd of native boats, lay 
moored under the bank ; and yonder, at the farther end of 
the promenade, a minaret and a cluster of whitewashed 
houses showed which way one must turn in going to the 
town. 

It chanced to be market-day ; so we saw Minieh under its 
best aspect, than which nothing could well be more squalid, 
dreary, and depressing. It was like a town dropped unex- 




StiBAH Cawe Sellers -Bedreshaym 



IlEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH. 89 

pectedly into the midst of a ploughed field ; the streets being 
mere trodden lanes of mud dust, and the houses a succession 
of windowless mud prisons with their backs to the thorough- 
fare. The Bazaar, which consists of two or three lanes a 
little wider than the rest, is roofed over here and there with 
rotting palm-rafters and bits of tattered matting ; while the 
market is held in a space of waste ground outside the town. 
The former, with its little cupboard-like shops in which the 
merchants sit cross-legged like shabby old idols in shabby 
old shrines — the ill-furnished shelves — the familiar Man- 
chester goods — the gaudy native stuffs — tlie old red saddles 
and faded rugs hanging up for sale — the smart Greek stores 
where Bass's ale, claret, cura^oa, Cyprus, Vermouth, cheese, 
pickles, sardines, Worcester sauce, blacking, biscuits, pre- 
served meats, candles, cigars, matches, sugar, salt, station- 
ery, fireworks, jams, and patent medicines can all be bought 
at one fell swoop — the native cook's shop exhaling savoury 
perfumes of Kebabs and lentil soup, and presided over by an 
Abyssinian Soyer blacker than the blackest historical per- 
sonage ever was painted — the surging, elbowing, clamorous 
crowd — the donkeys, the camels, the street-cries, the chatter, 
the dust, the flies, the fleas, and the dogs, all put us in mind 
of the poorer quarters of Cairo. In the market, it is even 
worse. Here are hundreds of country folk sitting on the 
ground behind their baskets of fruits and vegetables. Some 
have eggs, butter, and buffalo-cream for sale, while others 
sell sugar-canes, limes, cabbages, tobacco, barley, dried lentils, 
split beans, maize, wheat, and dura. The women go to and 
fro with bouquets of live poultry. The chickens scream ; 
the sellers rave ; the buyers bargain at the top of their 
voices ; the dust flies in clouds ; the sun pours down floods 
of light and heat ; you can scarcely hear yourself speak ; and 
the crowd is as dense as that other crowd which at this very 
moment, on this very Christmas Eve, is circulating among 
the alleys of Leadenhall Market. 

The things were very cheap. A hundred eggs cost about 
fourteen-pence in English money ; chickens sold for five- 
pence each ; pigeons from twopence to twopence-halfpenny ; 
and fine live geese for two shillings a head. The turkeys, 
however, which were large and excellent, were priced as high 
as three-and-sixpence ; being about half as much as one pays 
in Middle and Tipper Egypt for a lamb. A good sheep may 
be bought for sixteen shillings or a pound. The M. B.'s, 
who had no dragoman and did their own marketing, were 



90 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

very busy here, laying in store of fresh provision, bargaining 
fluently in Arabic, and escorted by a bodyguard of sailors. 

A solitary dom palm, the northernmost of its race and the 
first specimen one meets with on the Mle, grows in a garden 
adjoining this market-place : but we could scarcely see it for 
the blinding dust. Now, a dom palm is just the sort of tree 
that De Wint should have painted — odd, angular, with long 
forked stems, each of which terminates in a shock-headed 
crown of stiff finger-like fronds shading heavy clusters of 
big shiny nuts about the size of Jerusalein artichokes. It is, 
I suppose, the only nut in the world of which one throws away 
the kernel and eats the shell ; but the kernel is as hard as 
marble, while the shell is fibrous, and tasts like stale ginger- 
bread. The dom palm must bifurcate, for bifurcation is the 
law of its being ; but I could never discover whether there 
was any fixed limit to the number of stems into which it 
might subdivide. At the same time, I do not remember to 
have seen any with less than two heads or more than six. 

Coming back through the town, we were accosted by a 
withered one-eyed hag like a reanimated mummy, who 
offered to tell us our fortunes. Before her lay a dirty rag of 
handkerchief full of shells, pebbles, and chips of broken 
glass and pottery. Squatting toad-like under a sunny bit of 
wall, the lower part of her face closely veiled, her skinny 
arms covered with blue and green glass bracelets and her 
fingers with misshapen silver rings, she hung over these 
treasures ; shook, mixed, and interrogated them with all the 
fervour of divination ; and delivered a string of the prophe- 
cies usually forthcoming on these occasions. 

" You have a friend far away, and your friend is thinking 
of you. There is good fortune in store for you ; and money 
coming to you ; and pleasant news on the way. You will 
soon receive letters in which there will be something to vex 
you, but more to make you glad. Within thirty days you 
will unexpectedly meet one whom you dearly love," etc. etc. 
etc. 

It was just the old familiar story retold in Arabic, without 
even such variations as might have been expected from the 
lips of an old fellaha born and bred in a provincial town of 
Middle Egypt. 

It may be that ophthalmia especially prevailed in this 
part of the country, or that being brought unexpectedly into 
the midst of a large crowd, one observed the people more 
narrowly, but I certainly never saw so many one-eyed human 



BEDEESRAYN TO MINIEH. 91 

beings as that morning at Minieh. There must have been 
present in the streets and market-place from ten to twelve 
thousand natives of all ages, and I believe it is no exaggera- 
tion to say that at least every twentieth person, down to 
little toddling children of three and four years of age, was 
blind of an eye. Not being a particularly well-favoured 
race, this defect added the last touch of repulsiveness to faces 
already sullen, ignorant, and unfriendly. A more unprepos- 
sessing population I would never wish to see — the men 
half stealthy, half insolent ; the women bold and fierce ; 
the children filthy, sickly, stunted, and stolid. Nothing in 
provincial Egypt is so painful to witness as the neglected 
condition of very young children. Those belonging to even 
the better class are for the most part shabbily clothed and of 
more than doubtful cleanliness ; while the offspring of the 
very poor are simply encrusted with dirt and sores, and 
swarming with vermin. It is at first hard to believe that 
the parents of these unfortunate babies err, not from cruelty, 
but through sheer ignorance and superstition. Yet so it is ; 
and the time when these people can be brought to compre- 
hend the most elementary principles of sanitary reform is 
yet far distant. To wash your children is injurious to health ; 
therefore the mothers suffer them to fall into a state of per- 
sonal uncleanliness which is alone enough to engender dis- 
ease. To brush away the flies that beset their eyes is 
impious ; hence ophthalmia and various kinds of blindness. 
I have seen infants lying in their mothers' arms with six or 
eight flies in each eye. I have seen the little helpless hands 
put down reprovingly, if they approached the seat of annoy- 
ance. I have seen children of four and live years old with 
the surface of one or both eyes eaten awaj^ ; and others with 
a large fleshy lump growing out where the pupil had been 
destroyed. Taking these things into account, the wonder is, 
after all, not that three children should die in Egypt out of 
every five — not that each twentieth person in certain dis- 
tricts should be blind, or partially blind ; but that so many 
as forty per cent of the whole infant population should actu- 
ally live to grow up, and that ninety-five per cent should 
enjoy the blessing of sight. For my own part, I had not 
been many weeks on the Nile before I began systematically 
to avoid going about the native towns whenever it was 
])racticable to do so. That I may so have lost an opportunity 
of now and then seeing more of the street-life of the people 
is very probable ; but such outside glimpses are of little real 



92 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

value, and I at all events escaped the sight of much poverty, 
sickness, and squalor. The condition of the inhabitants is 
not worse, perhaps, in an Egyptian Beled ^ than in many an 
Irish village ; but the condition of the children is so distress- 
ing that one would willingly go any number of miles out of 
the way rather than witness their suffering without the 
power to alleviate it.^ 

If the population in and about Minieli are personally 
unattractive, their appearance at all events matches their 
reputation, which is as bad as that of their neighbours. Of 




MARKET BOAT MINIEH. 

the manners and customs of Beni Suef we had already some 
experience ; while public opinion charges Minieh, Rhoda, -and 
most of the towns and villages north of Siut, with the like 
marauding propensities. As for the villages at the foot of 
Beni Hassan, they have been mere dens of thieves for many 
generations ; and though razed to the ground some years ago 

1 Beled — village. 

2 Miss Whately, whose evidence on this subject is peenliarly valuable, 
states tliat the majority of native children die off at, ov under, two years of 
age {Amonci the Huts, p. 29); while M. About, who enjoyed unusual oppor- 
tunities of inquiring into facts connected with the population and resources 
of the country, says that the nation loses three children out of every five. 
" L'ignorance publique, I'oubli des premiers elements d'hygiene, la mau- 
vaise alimentation, I'absence presque totale des soins medicaux, tarissent 
la nation dans sa source. Un peuple qui perd regulierement trois enfants 
sur cinq ue saurait croitre sans miracle." — Le Fellah, p. 165. 



BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH. 93 

by way of punishment, are now rebuilt, and in as bad odour 
as ever. It is necessary, therefore, in all this part of the 
river, not only to hire guards at night, but, when the boat is 
moored, to keep a sharp look-out against thieves by day. In 
Upper Egypt it is very different. There the natives are 
good-looking, good-natured, gentle, and kindly ; and though 
clever enough at manufacturing and selling modern antiqui- 
ties, are not otherwise dishonest. 

That same evening — (it was Christmas Eve) — nearly 
two hours earlier than their train was supposed to be due, 
the rest of our party arrived at Minieh. 



94 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MINIEH TO SIUT. 

It is Christinas Day. The M. B.'s are coining to dinner ; 
the cooks are up to their eyes in entrees ; tlie crew are 
treated to a sheep in lionour of the occasion ; the new-comers 
are unpacking; and we are all gradually settling down into 
our respective places. Now, the new-comers consist of four 
persons : — a Painter, a Happy Couple, and a maid. The 
Painter has already been up the Nile three times, and brings 
a fund of experience into the council. He knows all about 
sandbanks, and winds, and mooring-places ; is acquainted 
with most of the native governors and consuls along the 
river ; and is great on the subject of wliat to eat, drink, and 
avoid. The stern-cabin is given to him for a studio, and 
contains frames, canvases, drawing-paper, and easels enough 
to start a provincial school of art. He is going to paint a 
big picture rt Aboo-Simbel. The Happy Couple, it is unne- 
cessary to say, are on their wedding tour. In point of fact, 
they have not yet been married a month. The bridegroom 
is what the world chooses to call an idle man ; that is to say, 
he has scholarship, delicate health, and leisure. The bride, 
for convenience, shall be called the Little Lady. Of people 
who are struggling through that helpless phase of human 
life called the honeymoon, it is not fair to say more than that 
they are both young enough to make the situation interesting. 

Meanwhile the deck must be cleared of the new luggage 
that has come on board, and the day passes in a confusion of 
unpacking, arranging, and putting away. Such running to 
and fro as there is down below ; such turning-out of boxes 
and knocking-up of temporary shelves ; such talking, and 
laughing, and hammering! Nor is the bustle confined to 
downstairs. Talhamy and the waiters are just as busy above, 
adorning the upper deck with palm-branches and hanging 
the boat all round with rows of coloured lanterns. One can 
hardly believe, however, that it is Christmas Day — that 
there are fires blazing at home in every room ; that the 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 95 

chiirch-tield, perhaps, is white with snow ; and that the 
familiar bells are ringing merrily across the frosty air. 
Here at midday it is already too hot on deck without the 
awning, and when we moor towards sunset near a river-side 
village in a grove of palms, the cooler air of evening is 
delicious. 

There is novelty in even such a commonplace matter as 
dining out, on the Nile. You go and return in your felucca, 
as if it were a carriage ; and your entertainers summon you 
by firing a dinner-gun, instead of sounding a gong. Wise 
people who respect the feelings of their cooks fire a dressing- 
gun as well ; for watches soon differ in a hopeless way for 
want of the church-clock to set them by, and it is always 
possible that host and guest may be an hour or two apart in 
their reckoning. 

The customary guns having therefore been fired, and the 
party assembled, we sat down to one of cook Bedawee's 
prodigious banquets. Not, however, till the plum-pudding, 
blazing demoniacally, appeared upon the scene, did any of us 
succeed in believing that it was really Christmas Day. 

Nothing could be prettier or gayer than the spectacle that 
awaited us when we rose from table. A hundred and fifty 
coloured lanterns outlined the boat from end to end, sparkled 
up the masts, and cast broken reflections in the moving cur- 
rent. The upper-deck, hung with flags and partly closed in 
with awnings, looked like a bower of palms. The stars and 
the crescent moon shone overhead. Dim outlines of trees 
and headlands, and a vague perspective of gleaming river, 
were visible in the distance ; while a light gleamed now and 
then in the direction of the village, or a dusky figure flitted 
along the bank. 

Meanwhile, there was a sound of revelry by night; for our 
sailors had invited the Bagstones' crew to unlimited coffee 
and tobacco, and had quite a large party on the lower deck. 
They drammed, they sang, they danced, they dressed up, 
improvised a comic scene, and kept their audience in a roar. 
Eeis Hassan did the honours. George, Talhamy, and the 
maids sat apart at the second table and sipped their coffee 
genteelly. We looked on and applauded. At ten o'clock a 
pan of magnesium powder was burned, and our Fantasia 
ended with a blaze of light, like a pantomime. 

In Egypt, by the way, any entertainment which is en- 
livened by music, dancing, or fireworks is called a Fan- 
tas'a. 



96 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

And DOW, sometimes sailing, sometimes tracking, some- 
times punting, we go on day by day, making what speed we 
can. Things do not, of course, always fall out exactly as one 
would have them. The wind too often fails when we most 
need it, and gets up when there is something to be seen on 
shore. Thus, after a whole morning of tracking, we reach 
Beni Hassan at the moment when a good breeze has suddenly 
mied our sails for the first time in forty -eight hours ; and so, 
yielding to counsels which we afterwards deplored, we pass 
on with many a longing look at the terraced doorways 
pierced along the cliffs. At Rhoda, in the same way, we 
touch for only a few minutes to post and inquire for letters, 
and put off till our return the inland excursion to Dayr el 
Nakhl, where is to be seen the famous painting of the Colos- 
sus on the Sledge. But sights deferred are fated sometimes 
to remain unseen, as we found by and by to our exceeding 
loss and regret. 

Meanwhile, the skies are always cloudless, the days warm, 
the evenings exquisite. We of course live very much in the 
open air. When there is no wind, we land and take long 
walks by the river-side. When on board, we sketch, write 
letters, read Champollion, Bunsen, and Sir Gardner Wilkin- 
son ; and work hard at Egyptian dynasties. The sparrows 
and water-wagtails perch familiarly on the awnings and hop 
about the deck ; the cocks and hens chatter, the geese cackle, 
the turkeys gobble in their coops close by ; and our sacriticial 
sheep, leading a solitary life in the felucca, comes baaing in 
the rear. Sometimes we have as many as a hundred chickens 
on board (to say nothing of pigeons and rabbits) and two or 
even three sheep in the felucca. The poultry yard is railed 
off, however, at the extreme end of the stern, so that the 
creatures are well away from the drawing-room ; and Avhen 
we moor at a suitable place, they are let out for a few hours 
to peck about the banks and enjoy their liberty. L. and the 
Little Lady feed these hapless prisoners with breakfast- 
scraps every morning, to the profound amusement of the 
steersman, who, unable to conceive any other motive, ima- 
gines they are fatting them for table. 

Such is our Noah's Ark life, pleasant, peaceful, and patri- 
archal. Even on days when there is little to see and nothing 
to do, it is never dull. Trifling incidents which have for us 
the excitement of novelty ai-e continually occurring. Other 
dahabeeyahs, their flags and occupants, are a constant source 
of interest. Meeting at mooring-places for the night, we now 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 97 

and then exchange visits. Passing each other by day, we dip 
ensigns, fire sahites, and punctiliously observe the laws of 
maritime etiquette. Sometimes a Cook's Excursion-steamer 
hurries by, crowded with tourists ; or a government tug tow- 
ing three or four great barges closely packed with wretched- 
looking, half-naked fellaheen bound for forced labor on some 
new railway or canal. Occasionally we pass a dahabeeyah 
sticking fast upon a sandbank ; and sometimes we stick on 
one ourselves. Then the men fly to their punting poles, or 
jump into the river like water-dogs, and, grunting in melan- 
choly cadence, shove the boat of£ with their shoulders. 

The birds, too, are new, and we are always looking out for 
them. Perhaps we see a top-heavy pelican balancing his huge 
yellow bill over the edge of the stream, and fishing for his 
dinner — or a flight of wild geese trailing across tlie sky 
towards sunset — or a select society of vultures perched all 
in a row upon a ledge of rock, and solemn as the bench of 
bishops. Then there are the herons who stand on one leg 
and doze in the sun ; the strutting hoopoes with their legend- 
ary top-knots ; the blue and green bee-eaters hovering over 
the uncut dura. The pied kingfisher, black and white like a 
magpie, sits fearlessly under the bank and never stirs, though 
the tow-rope swings close above his head and the dahabeeyah 
glides within a few feet of the shore. The paddy-birds 
whiten the sandbanks by hundreds, and rise in a cloud at 
our approach. The sacred hawk, circling overhead, utters 
the same sweet, piercing, melancholy note that the Pharaohs 
listened to of old. 

The scenery is for the most part of the ordinary Nile pat- 
tern ; and for many a mile we see the same things over and 
over again : — the level bank shelving down steeply to the 
river; the strip of cultivated soil, green with maize or tawny 
with dura ; the frequent mud-village and palm-grove ; the 
deserted sugar-factory with its ungainly chimney and shat- 
tered windows ; the water-wheel slowly revolving with its 
necklace of pots ; the shaduf worked by two brown athletes ; 
the file of laden camels ; the desert, all sand-hills and sand- 
plains, with its background of mountains ; the long reach, and 
the gleaming sail ahead. Sometimes, however, as at Kom. 
Ahmar, we skirt the ancient brick mounds of some forgotten 
city, with fragments of arched foundations, and even of walls 
and doorways, reaching down to the water's edge ; or, sailing 
close under ranges of huge perpendicular cliffs, as at Gebel 
Abufayda, startle the cormorants from their haunts, and peer 



98 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP TUE NILE. 



as we pass into the dim recesses of many a rock-cut tomb 
excavated just above the level of the inundation. 

This Gebel Abufayda has a bad name for sudden winds ; 
especially at the beginning and end of the range, where the 
Nile bends abruptly and the valley opens out at right angles 




GKBEL ABUFAYDA. 



to the river. It is line to see lleis Hassan, as we approach 
one of the worst of these bad bits — a point where two steep 
ravines divided by a bold headland command the passage like 
a pair of grim cannon, and rake it with blasts from the North- 
Eastern desert. Here tlie current, flowing deep and strong, 
is met by the wind and runs high in crested waves. Our 
little captain, kicking off his shoes, himself springs up the 
rigging and there stands silent and watchful. The sailors, 
ready to shift our mainsail at the word of command, cling 
some to the shoghool ^ and some to the end of the yard ; the 
boat tears on before the wind ; the great bluff looms u]) darker 
and nearer. Then comes a breathless moment. Then a 
sharp, sudden word from the little man in the main rigging; 
a yell and a whoop from the sailors ; a slow, heavy lurch of 
the flapping sail; and the corner is turned in safety. 

The cliffs here are very fine ; much loftier and less uniform 
than at Gebel et Tayr ; rent into strange forms, as of sphinxes, 
cheesewrings, towers, and bastions ; honeycombed with long 
ranges of rock-cut tombs ; and undermined by water-washed 

1 Arabic — shor/hool : a rope by which the mainsail is regulated. 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 99 

caverns in which lurk a few lingering crocodiles. If at Gebel 
et Tayr the rock is worn into semblances of Arabesque orna- 
mentation, here it looks as if inscribed all over with myste- 
rious records in characters not unlike the Hebrew. Records 
they are, too, of prehistoric days — chronicles of his own 
deeds carved by the great God Nile himself, the Hapimu of 
ancient time — but the language in which they are written 
has never been spoken by man. 

As for the rock-cut tombs of Gebel Abufayda, they must 
number many hundreds. For nearly twelve miles, the range 
runs parallel to the river, and throughout that distance the 
face of the cliffs is pierced with innumerable doorways. 
Some are small and square, twenty or thirty together, like 
rows of port-holes. Others are isolated. Some are cut so 
high up that they must have been approached from above ; 
others again come close upon the level of the river. Some 
of the doorways are faced to represent jambs and architraves ; 
some, excavated laterally, appear to consist of a series of 
chambers, and are lit from without by small windows cut in 
the rock. One is approached by a flight of rough steps lead- 
ing up from the water's edge ; and another, hewn high in the 
face of the cliff, just within the mouth of a little ravine, 
shows a simple but imposing facade supported by four de- 
tached pillars. No modern travellers seem to visit these 
tombs ; while those of the old school, as Wilkinson, Cham- 
pollion, etc., dismiss them with a few observations. Yet, 
with the single exception of the mountains behind Thebes, 
there is not, I believe, any one spot in Egypt which contains 
such a multitude of sepulchral excavations. Many look, 
indeed, as if they might belong to the same interesting and 
early epoch as those of Beni Hassan. 

I may here mention that about half-way, or rather less than 
half-way, along the whole length of the range, I observed two 
large hieroglyphed stelae incised upon the face of a projecting 
mass of boldly rounded cliff at a height of perliaps a hundred 
and fifty feet above the river. These stelae, apparently royal 
ovals, and sculptured as usual side by side, may have meas- 
ured from twelve to fifteen feet in height ; but in the absence 
of any near object by which to scale them, I could form but 
a rough guess as to their actual dimensions. The boat was 
just then going so fast, that to sketch or take notes of the 
hieroglyphs was impossible. Before I could adjust my glass 
they were already in the rear ; and by the time I had called 
the rest of the party together, they were no longer distin- 
guishable. 



100 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Coming back several montlis later, I looked for them 
again, but without success ; for the intense midday sun was 
then pouring full upon the rocks, to the absolute obliteration 
of everything like shallow detail. While watching vainly, 
however, for the stelae, I was compensated by the unexpected 
sight of a colossal bas-relief high up on the northward face 
of a cliif standing, so to say, at the corner of one of those little 
recesses or culs-de-sac which here and there break the uni- 
formity of the range. The sculptural relief of this large 
subject was apparently very low ; but, owing to the angle 
at which it met the light, one figure, wliich could not have 
measured less than eighteen or twenty feet in height, was 
distinctly visible. I immediately drew L.'s attention to the 
spot ; and she not only discerned the figure without the help 
of a glass, but believed like myself that she could see traces 
of a second. 

As neither the stelae nor the bas-relief would seem to have 
been observed by previous travellers, I may add for the 
guidance of others that the round and tower-like rock upon 
which the former are sculptured lies about a mile to the 
southward of the Sheykh's tomb and palm-tree (a strikingly 
picturesque bit which no one can fail to notice), and a little 
beyond some very large excavations near the water's edge ; 
Avhile the bas-relief is to be found at a short distance below 
the Coptic convent and cemetery. 

Having for nearly twelve miles skirted the base of Gebel 
Abufayda — by far the finest panoramic stretch of rock 
scenery on this side of the second cataract — the ISTile takes 
an abrupt bend to the eastward, and thence flows through 
many miles of cultivated flat. On coming to this sudden 
elbow, the wind which had hitherto been carrying us along 
at a pace but little inferior to that of a steamer, now struck us 
full on the beam, and drove the boat to shore with such violence 
that all the steersman could do was just to run the Philae's 
nose into the bank, and steer clear of some ten or twelve 
native cangias that had been driven in before us. The Bag- 
stones rushed in next ; and presently a large iron-built 
dahabeeyah, having come gallantly along under the cliffs with 
all sail set, was seen to make a vain struggle at the fatal cor- 
ner, and then plunge headlong at the bank, like King Agib's 
ship upon the Loadstone Mountain. 

Imprisoned here all the afternoon, we exchanged visits of 
condolence with our neighbours in misfortune ; had our ears 
nearly cut to pieces by the driving sand ; and failed signally 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 101 

in the endeavour to take a walk on shore. Still the fury of 
the storm went on increasing. The wind howled ; the river 
raced in turbid waves ; the sand drove in clouds ; and the 
face of the sky was darkened as if by a London fog. Mean- 
while, one boat after another was hurled to shore, and before 
night-fall we numbered a fleet of some twenty odd craft, 
native and foreign. 

It took the united strength of both crews all next day to 
warp the Fhilaa and Bagstones across the river by means of a 
rope and an anchor ; an expedient that deserves special men- 
tion, not for its amazing novelty or ingenuity, but because 
our men declared it to be inpracticable. Their fathers, they 
said, had never done it. Their fathers' fathers had never done 
it. Therefore it was impossible. Being impossible, why 
should they attempt it ? 

They did attempt it, however, and, much to their astonish- 
ment, they succeeded. 

It was, I think, towards the afternoon of this second day, 
when strolling by the margin of the river, that we first made 
the acquaintance of tliat renowned insect, the Egyptian beetle. 
He was a very tine specimen of his race, nearly half an inch 
long in the back, as black and shiny as a scarab cut in jet, 
and busily engaged in the preparation of a large rissole of 
mud, which he presently began laboriously propelling up the 
bank. We stood and watched him for some time, half in 
admiration, half in pity. His rissole was at least four times 
bigger than himself, and to roll it up that steep incline to a 
point beyond the level of next summer's inundation was a 
labour of Hercules for so small a creature. One longed to 
play tlie part of the Deus ex muchina, and carry it up the 
bank for him ; but that would have been a denouement 
beyond his power of appreciation. 

We all know the old story of how this beetle lays its eggs 
by the river's brink ; encloses them in a ball of moist clay ; 
rolls the ball to a safe place on the edge of the desert ; buries 
it in the sand ; and when his time comes, dies content, having 
provided for the safety of his successors. Hence his mythic 
fame ; hence all the quaint symbolism that by degrees 
attached itself to his little person, and ended by investing 
him with a special sacredness which has often been mistaken 
for actual worship. Standing by thus, watching the move- 
ments of the creature, its untiring energy, its extraordinary 
muscular strength, its business-like devotion to the matter in 
hand, one sees how subtle alesson the old Egyptian moralists 



102 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

had presented to them for contemplation, and with how fine 
a combination of wisdom and poetry they regarded this little 
black scarab not only as an emblem of the creative and pre- 
serving power, but perhaps also of the immortality of the 
soul. As a type, no insect has ever had so much greatness 
thrust upon him. He became a hieroglyph, and stood for a 
word signifying botli To Be and To Transform. His portrait 
was multiplied a million-fold ; sculptured over the portals of 
temples ; fitted to the shoulders of a God ; engraved on gems ; 
moulded in pottery ; painted on sarcophagi and the walls of 
tombs ; worn by the living and buried with the dead. 

Every traveller on the Nile brings away a handful of the 
smaller scarabs, genuine or otherwise. Some may not par- 
ticularly care to possess them ; yet none can help buying 
them, if only because other people do so, or to get rid of a 
troublesome dealer, or to give to friends at home. I doubt, 
however, if even the most enthusiastic scarab-fanciers really 
feel in all its force the symbolism attaching to these little 
gems, or appreciate the exquisite naturalness of their execu- 
tion, till they have seen the living beetle at its work. 

In Nubia, where the strip of cultivable land is generally 
but a few feet in breadth, the scarab's task is comparatively 
light, and the breed multiplies freely. But in Eg3^pt he has 
often a wide plain to traverse with his burden, and is there- 
fore scarce in proportion to the difficulty with which he main- 
tains the struggle for existence. The scarab race in Egypt 
would seem indeed to have diminished very considerably 
since the days of the Pharaohs, and the time is not perhaps 
far distant when the naturalist will look in vain for speci- 
mens on this side of the first cataract. As far as my own 
experience goes, I can only say that I saw scores of these 
beetles during the Nubian part of the journey ; but that to 
the best of my recollection this was the only occasion upon 
which I observed one iu Egypt. 

The Nile makes four or five more great bends between 
Gebel Abufayda and Siut; passing Manfalut by the way, 
which town lies some distance back from the shore. All things 
taken into consideration — the fitful wind that came and went 
continually ; the tremendous zigzags of the river ; the dead 
calm which befell us when only eight miles from Siut ; and 
the long day of tracking that followed, Avith the town in sight 
the whole way — we thought ourselves fortunate to get in by 
the evening of the third day after the storm. These last 
eight miles are, however, for open, placid beauty, as lovely in 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 103 

their way as anything north of Thebes. The valley is here 
very Avide and fertile ; the town, with its multitudinous min- 
arets, appears first on one side and then on the other, accord- 
ing to the windings of the river ; the distant pinky mountains 
look almost as transparent as the air or the sunshine ; while 
the banks unfold an endless succession of charming little 
subjects, every one of which looks as if it asked to be 
sketched as we pass. A shaduf and a clump of palms — a 
triad of shaggy black buffaloes, up to their shoulders in the 
river, and dozing as they stand — a wide-spreading sycamore 
fig, in the shade of which lie a man and camel asleep — a 
fallen palm uprooted by the last inundation, with its fibrous 




KIVKK-SIUE TOJIBS NEAR SIUT. 



roots yet clinging to the bank and its crest in the water — 
a group of sheykhs' tombs with glistening white cupolas 
relieved against a background of dark foliage — an old dis- 
used water-wheel lying up sidewise against the bank like a 
huge teetotum, and garlanded with wild tendrils of a gourd 
— such are a few out of many bits by the way, Avhich, if they 
offer nothing very new, at all events present the old material 
under fresh aspects, and in combination Avith a distance of 
such ethereal light and shade, and such opalescent tenderness 
of tone, that it looks more like an air-drawn mirage than a 
piece of the Avorld we live in. 

Like a mirage, too, that fairy town of Siut seemed ahvays 
to hover at the same unattainable distance, and after hours 
of tracking to be no nearer than at first. Sometimes, indeed, 
following the long reaches of the river, we appeared to be 
leaving it behind ; and although, as I have said, we had eight 



104 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

miles of hard worK to get to it, I doubt whether it was ever 
more than three miles distant as the bird flies. It was late 
in the afternoon, however, when we turned the last corner; 
and the sun was already setting when the boat reached the 
village of Hamra, which is the mooring-place for Siut — Siut 
itself, with clustered cupolas and arrowy minarets, lying back 
in the plain, at the foot of a great mountain pierced with 
tombs. 

Now, it was in the bond that our crew were to be allowed 
twenty-four hours for making and baking bread at Siut, 
Esneh, and Assuan. No sooner, therefore, was the dahabee- 
yah moored than Reis Hassan and the steersman started 
away at full speed on two little donkeys, to buy flour; while 
Mehemet Ali, one of our most active and intelligent sailors, 
rushed off to hire the oven. For here, as at Esneh and 
Assuan, there are large flour-stores and public bakehouses 
for the use of sailors on the river, who make and bake their 
bread in large lots ; cut it into slices ; dry it in the sun ; and 
preserve it in the form of rusks for months together. Thus 
prepared, it takes the place of ship-biscuit ; and it is so far 
superior to ship-biscuit that it neither moulds nor breeds the 
maggot, but remains good and wholesome to the last crumb. 

Siut, frequently written Asyoot, is the capital of Middle 
Egypt, and has the best bazaars of any town up the Nile. 
Its red and black pottery is famous throughout the country ; 
and its pipe-bowls (supposed to be the best in the East), 
being largely exported to Cairo, find their way not only to 
all parts of the Levant, but to every Algerine and Japanese 
shop in London and Paris. No lover of peasant pottery will 
yet have forgotten the Egyptian stalls in the Ceramic Gal- 
lery of the International Exhibition of 1871. All those 
quaint red vases and lustrous black tazzas, all those exqui- 
site little coffee services, those crocodile paper-weights, those 
barrel-shaped and bird-shaped bottles, came from Siut. 
There is a whole street of such pottery here in the toAvn. 
Your dahabeeyah is scarcely made fast before a dealer comes 
on board and ranges his brittle wares along the deck. 
Others display their goods upon the bank. But the best 
things are only to be had in the bazaars ; and not even in 
Cairo is it possible to find Siut ware so choice in color, form, 
and design as that which the two or three best dealers bring 
out, wrapped in soft paper, when a European customer ap- 
pears in the market. 

Besides the street of pottery, there is a street of red 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 



105 




106 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

shoes ; another of native and foreign stuffs ; and the usual 
ran of saddlers' shops, kebab-stalls, and Greek stores for the 
sale of everything in heaven or earth from third-rate cognac 
to patent wax vestas. The houses are of plastered mud 
or sun-dried bricks, as at Minieh. Tlie thoroughfares are 
dusty, narrow, unpaved and crowded, as at Minieh. Tlie 
people are one-eyed, dirty, and unfragrant, as at Minieh. 
The children's eyes are full of flies and their heads are 
covered with sores, as at Minieh. In short, it is Minieh 
over again on a larger scale ; differing only in respect of its 
inhabitants, who, instead of being sullen, thievish, and 
unfriendly, are too familiar to be pleasant, and the most 
unappeasable beggars out of Ireland. So our mirage turns 
to sordid reality, and Siut, which from afar off looked like 
the capital of Dreamland, resolves itself into a big mud 
town as ugly and ordinary as its fellows. Even the min- 
arets, so elegant from a distance, betray for the most part 
but rougli masonry and clumsy ornamentation when closely 
looked into. 

A lofty embanked road planted with fine sycamore-figs 
leads from Hamra to Siut ; and another embanked road 
leads from Siut to the mountain of tombs. Of the ancient 
Egyptian city no vestige remains, the modern town being 
built upon the mounds of tlie earlier settlement ; but the 
City of the Dead — so much of it, at least, as was excavated 
in the living rock — survives, as at Memphis, to commemo- 
rate the departed splendor of the place. 

We took donkeys next day to the edge of the desert, and 
went up to the sepulchres on foot. The mountain, which 
looked a delicate salmon pink when seen from afar, now 
showed bleached and arid and streaked with ochreous yel- 
low. Layer above layer, in beds of strongly marked strati- 
fication, it towered overhead; tier above tier, the tombs 
yawned, open-mouthed, along the face of the precipice. I 
picked up a fragment of the rock, and found it light, porous, 
and full of little cells, like pumice. The slopes were strewn 
with such stones, as well as with fragments of mummy, 
shreds of mummy-cloth, and human bones all whitening and 
withering in the sun. 

The first tomb we came to was the so-called Stabl Antar 
— a magnificent but cruelly mutilated excavation, consist- 
ing of a grand entrance, a vaulted corridor, a great hall, two 
side-chambers, and a sanctuary. The ceiling of the corridor, 
now smoke-blackened and defaced, has been richly deco- 



MINIEH TO SIUT. 107 

rated with intricate patterns in light green, white, and buff, 
upon a ground of dark bluish-green stucco. The wall to the 
right on entering is covered with a long hieroglyphic in- 
scription. In the sanctuary, vague traces of seated figures, 
male and female, with lotus blossoms in their hands, are 
dimly visible. Two colossal warriors incised in outline upon 
the levelled rock — the one very perfect, the other hacked 
almost out of recognition — stand on each side of the huge 
portal. A circular hole in the threshold marks the spot 
where the great door once worked upon its pivot; and a 
deep pit, now partially filled in with rubbish, leads from the 
centre of the hall to some long-rifled vault deep down in the 
heart of the mountain. Wilful destruction has been at work 
on every side. The wall-sculptures are chipped and defaced 
— the massive pillars that once supported the superincum- 
bent rock have been quarried away — the interior is heaped 
high with debris. Enough is left, however, to attest the 
antique stateliness of the tomb ; and the hieroglyphic in- 
scription remains almost intact to tell its age and history. 

This inscription (erroneously entered in Murray's Guide 
as uncopied, but interpreted by Brugsch, who published 
extracts from it as far back as 1862) shows the excavation 
to have been made for one Hepoukefa, or Haptefa, nomarch 
of the Lycopolite Nome, and Chief Priest of the jackal god 
of Siut.^ It is also famous among scientific students for cer- 
tain passages which contain important information regard- 
ing the intercalary days of the Egyptian kalendar.^ We 
observed that the full-length figures on the jambs of the 
doorway appeared to have been incised, filled in with stucco, 
and then coloured. The stucco had for the most part fallen 
out, though enough remained to show the style of the 
work.^ 

From this tomb to the next we crept by way of a passage, 
tunnelled in the mountain, and emerged into a spacious, 
quadrangular grotto, even more dilapidated than the first. 

1 The known inscriptions in the tomb of Haptefa have recently been 
recopied, and another long inscription, not previously transcribed, has been 
copied and translated, by Mr. F. Llewellyn Griffith, acting for the Egypt 
Exploration Fund. Mr. Griffith has for the first time fixed the date of 
this famous tomb, whicli was made during the reign of Usertesen I, of the 
Xllth dynasty. [Note to Second Edition.] 

2 See Eecueil des Monuments Egyptiens, Brugsch. Part I. PlancLe 
xi. Published 1862. 

3 Some famous tombs of very early date, enriched with the same kind 
of inlaid decoration, are to be seen at Meydum, near the base of the Mey- 
dfim Pyramid. 



108 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

It had been originally supported by square pillars left stand- 
ing in the substance of the rock ; but, like the pillars in the 
tomb of Hepoukefa, they had been hewn away in the middle 
and looked like stalactite columns in process of formation. 
For the rest, two half-filled pits, a broken sarcophagus, and 
a few painted hieroglyphs upon a space of stuccoed wall, 
were all that remained. 

One would have liked to see the sepulchre in which 
Ampere, the brilliant and eager disciple of Champollion, 
deciphered the ancient name of Siut ; but since he does not 
specify the cartouche by which it could be identified, one 
might wander about the mountain for a week without being 
able to find it. Having first described the Stabl Antar, he 
says : — "In another grotto I found twice over the name of 
the city written in hieroglyphic characters, Ci-ou-t. This 
name forms part of an inscription which also contains an 
ancient royal cartouche ; so proving that the present name 
of the city dates back to Pharaonic times." ^ 

Here, then, we trace a double process of preservation. 
This town, which in the ancient Egyptian was written Ssout, 
became Lycopolis under the Greeks ; continued to be called 
Lycopolis throughout the period of Roman rule in Egypt ; 
reverted to its old historic name under the Copts of the 
middle ages, Avho wrote it Sioout; and survives in the Asyoot 
of the Arab fellah. Nor is this by any means a solitary 
instance. Khemmis in the same way became Panopolis, 
reverted to the Coptic Chmin, and to this day as Ekhmim 
perpetuates the legend of its first foundation. As with 
these fragments of the old tongue, so with tlie race. Sub- 
dued again and again by invading hordes ; intermixed for 
centuries together with Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman, 
and Arab blood, it fuses these heterogeneous elements in 
one common mould, reverts persistently to the early type, 
and remains Egyptian to the last. So strange is the tyranny 
of natural forces. The sun and soil of Egypt demand one 
special breed of men, and will tolerate no other. Foreign 
residents cannot rear children in the country. In the isth- 
mus of Suez, which is considered the healthiest part of Egypt, 
an alien population of twenty thousand persons failed in the 
course of ten years to rear one infant born upon the soil. 
Children of an alien father and an Egyptian mother will die 

1 Voyage en Egypte et en Nvbie, by J. J. Ampere. The cartouche may 
perhaps be that of Rakameri, mentioned by Brugsch : Histoire d'Egypte, 
chap, vi., first edition. 



MINIEII TO SIUT. 109 

off in the same way in early infancy, unless brought up in 
simple native fashion. And. it is affirmed of the descendants 
of mixed marriages, that after the third generation the 
foreign blood seems to be eliminated, while the traits of the 
race are restored in their original purity. 

These are but a few instances of the startling conservatism 
of Egypt, — a conservatism which interested me particularly, 
and to which I shall frequently have occasion to return. 

Each Nome, or province, of ancient Egypt had its sacred 
animal ; and Siut was called L3T.opolis by the Greeks ^ be- 
cause the wolf (now almost extinct in the land) was there 
held in the same kind of reverence as the eat at Bubastis, 
the crocodile at Ombos, and the lion at Leontopolis. Mum- 
my-wolves are, or used to be, found in the smaller tombs 
about the mountain, as well as mummy jackals; Anubis, the 
jackal-headed god, being the presiding deity of the district. 
A mummied jackal from this place, curiously wrapped in 
striped bandages, is to be seen in the First Egyptian Room 
at the British Museum. 

But the view from the mountain above Siut is finer than 
Its tombs and more ancient than its mummies. Seen from 
within the great doorway of the second grotto, it looks like 
a framed picture. For the foreground, we have a dazzling 
slope of limestone debris ; in the middle distance, a wide 
plain clothed with the delicious tender green of very young 
corn ; farther away yet, the cupolas and minarets of Siut 
rising from the midst of a belt of palm-groves ; beyond these 
again, the molten gold of the great river glittering away, coil 
after coil, into the far distance ; and all along the horizon, 
the everlasting boundary of the desert. Large pools of 
placid water left by the last inundation lie here and there, 
like lakes amid the green. A group of brown men are wad- 
ing yonder with their nets. A funeral comes along the em- 
banked road — the bier carried at a rapid pace on men's 
shoulders, and covered with a red shawl ; the women taking 
up handfuls of dust and scattering it upon their heads as 
they walk. We can see the dust flying, and hear their shrill 
Avail borne upon the breathless air. The cemetery towards 
which they are going lies round to the left, at the foot of the 
mountain — a wilderness of little white cupolas, with here 
and there a tree. Broad spaces of shade sleep under the 
spreading sycamores by the road-side ; a hawk circles over- 

1 The Greeks translated the sacred names of Egyptian places; the Copts 
adopted the civil names. 



110 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

head ; and Siut, bathed in the splendour of the morning sun, 
looks as fairy-like as ever. 

Lepsius is reported to have said that the view from this 
hill-side was the finest in Egypt. But Egypt is a long 
country, and questions of precedence are delicate matters to 
deal with. It is, however, a very beautiful view ; though 
most travellers who know the scenery about Thebes and the 
approach to Assuan would hesitate, I should fancy, to give 
the preference to a landscape from which the iiearer moun- 
tains are excluded by the position of the spectator. 

The tombs here, as in many other parts of Egypt, are said 
to have been largely appropriated by early Christian ancho- 
rites during the reigns of the later Roman emperors ; and to 
these recluses may perhaps be ascribed the legend that makes 
Lycopolis the abode of Joseph and Mary during the years 
of their sojourn in Egypt. It is, of course, but a legend, and 
wholly improbable. If the Holy Family ever journeyed 
into Egypt at all, which certain Biblical critics now hold to 
be doubtful, they probably rested from their wanderings at 
some town not very far from the eastern border — as Tanis, 
or Pithom, or Bubastis. Siut would, at all events, lie at 
least 250 miles to the southward of any point to which they 
might reasonably be supposed to have penetrated. 

Still, one would like to believe a story that laid the scene 
of Our Lord's childhood in the midst of this beautiful and 
glowing Egyptian pastoral. With what profound and touch- 
ing interest it Avould invest the place ! With what different 
eyes we should look down upon a landscape which must have 
been dear and familiar to Him in all its details, and which, 
from the nature of the ground, must have remained almost 
unchanged from His day to ours ! The mountain with its 
tombs, the green corn-flats, the Nile and the desert, looked 
then as they look now. It is only the Moslem minarets that 
are new. It is only the pylons and sanctuaries of the ancient 
worship that have passed away. 




Hdad Tn SiuT. 



SIUT TO BEN DEBAR. Ill 



CHAPTER VII. 

SIUT TO DENDERAH. 

We started from Siut with a couple of tons of new brown 
bread on board, which, being cut into slices and laid to dry 
in the sun, was speedily converted into rusks and stored away 
in two huge lockers on the upper deck. The sparrows and 
water-wagtails had a good time while the drying went on ; 
but no one seemed to grudge the toll they levied. 

We often had a " big wind " now ; though it seldom began 
to blow before ten or eleven a.m. , and generally fell at sun- 
set. Now and then, when it chanced to keep up, and the 
river was known to be free from shallows, we went on sail- 
ing through the night ; but this seldom happened, and when 
it did happen, it made sleep impossible — so that nothing 
but the certainty of doing a great many miles between bed- 
time and breakfast could induce us to put up with it. 

We had now been long enough afloat to find out that we 
had almost always one man on the sick list, and were there- 
fore habitually short of a hand for the navigation of the boat. 
There never were such fellows for knocking themselves to 
pieces as our sailors. They were always bruising their feet, 
wounding their hands, getting sunstrokes, and whiltlows, and 
sprains, and disabling themselves in some way. L., with her 
little medicine chest and her roll of lint and bandages, soon 
had a small but steady practice, and might have been seen 
about the lower deck most mornings after breakfast, repair- 
ing these damaged Alls and Hassans. It was well for them 
that we carried ''an experienced surgeon," for they were 
entirely helpless and despondent when hurt, and ignorant of 
the commonest remedies. ISTor is this helplessness confirmed 
to natives of the sailor and fellah class. The provincial pro- 
prietors and officials are to the full as ignorant, not only of 
the uses of such simple things as poultices or wet compresses, 
but of the most elementary laws of health. Doctors there 
are none south of Cairo ; and such is the general mistrust of 
Stat>^ medicine, that when, as in the case of any widely spread 



112 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

epidemic, a medical officer is sent up the river by order of 
the Government, half the people are said to conceal their 
sick, while the other half reject the remedies prescribed for 
them. Their trust in the skill of the passing European is, on 
the other hand, unbounded. Appeals for advice and medi- 
cine were constantly being made to us by both rich and poor; 
and there was something very pathetic in the simple faith 
with which they accepted any little help we were able to 
give them. Meanwhile L.'s medical reputation, being con- 
firmed by a few simple cures, rose high among the crew. 
They called her the Hakim Sitt (the Doctor-lady) ; obeyed 
her directions and swallowed her medicines as reverently as 
if she were the College of Surgeons personified ; and showed 
their gratitude in all kinds of pretty, child-like ways — sing- 
ing her favorite Arab song as they ran beside her donkey — 
searching for sculptured fragments whenever there were 
ruins to be visited — and constantly bringing her little gifts 
of pebbles and wild flowers. 

Above Siut, the picturesqueness of the river is confined for 
the most part to the eastern bank. We have almost always a 
near range of mountains on the Arabian side, and a more dis- 
tant chain on the Libyan horizon. Gebel Sheykh el Raaineh 
succeeds to Gebel Abufayda, and is followed in close succes- 
sion by the cliffs of Gow, of Gebel Sheykh el Hereedee, of 
Gebel Ayserat and Gebel Tukh — all alike rigid in strongly 
marked beds of level limestone strata ; flat-topped and even, 
like lines of giant ramparts ; and more or less pierced with 
orifices which we know to be tombs, but which look like 
loopholes from a distance. 

Flying before the Avind with both sails set, we see the 
rapid panorama unfold itself day after day, mile after mile, 
hour after hour. Villages, palm-groves, rock-cut sepulchres, 
flit past and are left behind. To-day we enter the region of 
the dom palm. To-morrow we pass the map-drawn limit of 
the crocodile. The cliffs advance, recede, open awa}^ into 
desolate-looking valleys, and show faint traces of paths lead- 
ing to excavated tombs on distant heights. The headland 
that looked shadowy in the distance a couple of hours ago, 
is reached and passed. The cargo-boat on which we have 
been gaining all the morning is outstripped and dwindling in 
the rear. Now we pass a bold bluff sheltering a sheykh's 
tomb and a solitary dom palm — now an ancient quarry from 
which the stone has been cut out in smooth masses, leaving 
great halls, and corridors, and stages in the mountain side. 



SIUT TO DENDEEAH. 113 

At Gow/ the scene of an insurrection headed by a crazy der- 
vish some ten years ago, we see, in place of a large and popu- 
lous village, only a tract of fertile corn-ground, a few ruined 
huts, and a group of decapitated palms. We are now skirt- 
ing Gebel Sheykli el Hereedee ; here bordered by a rich mar- 
gin of cultivated flat ; yonder leaving space for scarce a strip 
of roadway between the precipice and the river. Then comes 
Raaineh, a large village of square mud towers, lofty and bat- 
tlemented, with string-courses of pots for the pigeons — and 
later on, Girgeh, once the capital town of Middle Egypt, 
whera Ave put in for half an hour to post and inquire for 
letters. Here the Nile is fast eating away the bank and 
carrying the town by storm. A ruined mosque with pointed 
arches, roofless cloisters, and a leaning column that must 
surely have come to the ground by this time, stands just 
above the landing-place. A hundred years ago, it lay a 
qua 'ter of a mile from the river ; ten .years ago it was yet 
perfect ; after a few more inundations it will be swept away. 
Till that time comes, however, it helps to make Girgeh one 
of the most picturesque towns in Egypt. 

At Farshut we see the sugar-works in active operation — • 
smoke pouring from the tall chimneys ; steam issuing from 
the traps in the basement ; cargo-boats unlading fresh sugar- 
cane against the bank ; heavily burdened Arabs transporting it 
to the factory ; bullock-trucks laden with cane-leaf for firing. 
A little higher up, at Sahil Bajura on the opposite side of the 
river, we find the bank strewn for full a quarter of a mile with 
sugar-cane en masse. Hundreds of camels are either arriving 
laden with it, or going back for more — dozens of cargo-boats 
are drawn up to receive it — swarms of brown fellalieen are 
stacking it on board for unshipment again at Farshut. The 
c imels snort and growl ; the men shout ; the overseers in blue- 

1 According to the account given in her letters by Lady Duff Gordon, 
this dervish, who had acquired a reputation for unusual sanctity by repeat- 
ing the name of Allah oOOO times every niglit for three years, believed that 
he had by these means rendered himself invulnerable; and so, proclaiming 
himself the appointed Slayer of Antichrist, he stirred up a revolt among the 
villages bordering Gebel Sheykh Hereedee, instigated an attack on an 
English dahabeeyah, and brought down upon himself and all that country- 
side the swift and summary vengeance of the Government. Steamers with 
troops commanded by Fadl Pasha were despatclied up the river; rebels 
were shot; villages sacked ; crops and cattle confiscated. The women and 
children of the place were then distributed among the neighbouring ham- 
lets ; and Gow, which was as large a village as Luxor, ceased to exist. 
The dervish's fate remained uncertain. He was shot, according to some; 
and by others it was said that he had escaped into the desert under the pro- 
tection of a tribe of Bedouins. 



114 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

fringed robes and white turbans, stalk to and fro, and keep 
the work going. The mountains here recede so far as to be 
almost out of sight, and a plain rich in sugar-cane and date- 
palms widens out between them and the river. 

And now the banks are lovely with an unwonted wealth of 
verdure. The young corn clothes the plain like a carpet, 
while the yellow-tasselled mimosa, the feathery tamarisk, the 
dom and date palm, and the spreading sycamore-fig, border 
the towing-path like garden trees beside a garden walk. 

Farther on still, when all this greenery is left behind and 
the banks have again become flat and bare, we see to our 
exceeding surprise what seems to be a very large grizzled ape 
perched on the top of a dust-heap on the western bank. The 
creature is evidently quite tame, and sits on his haunches in 
just that chilly, melancholy posture that the chimpanzee is 
wont to assume in his cage at the Zoological Gardens. Some 
six or eight Arabs, one of whom has dismounted from his 
camel for the purpose, are standing round and staring at him, 
much as the British public stands and stares at the specimen 
in the Regent's Park. Meanwhile a strange excitement breaks 
out among our crew. They crowd to the side ; they shout; 
they gesticulate ; the captain salaams ; the steersman waves 
his hand ; all eyes are turned towards the shore. 

'' Do you see Sheykh Selim ? " cries Talhamy breathlessly, 
rushing up from below. " There he is ! Look at him ! That 
is Sheykh Selim ! " 

And so we find out that it is not a monkey but a man — 
and not only a man, but a saint. Holiest of the holy, dirtiest 
of the dirty, white-pated, white-bearded, withered, bent, and 
knotted up, is the renowned Sheykh Selim — he who, naked 
and unwashed, has sat on that same spot every day through 
summer heat and winter cold for the last fifty years; never 
providing himself with food or water ; never even lifting his 
hand to his mouth ; depending on charity not only for his 
food but for his feeding ! He is not nice to look at, even by 
this dim light, and at this distance ; but the sailors think 
him quite beautiful, and call aloud to him for his blessing as 
we go by. 

" It is not by our own will that we sail past, father ! " 
they cry. " Fain would we kiss thy hand ; but the wind blows 
and the merkeb (boat) goes and we have no power to stay ! " 

But Sheykh Selim neither lifts his head nor shows any sign 
of hearing, and in a few minutes the mound on which he sits 
is left behind in the grloamin.c:. 



SIUT TO DENDEBAH. 



Ill 




116 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

At How, Avhere the new town is partly built on the 
mounds of the old (Diospolis Parva), we next morning saw 
the natives transporting small boat-loads of ancient brick- 
rubbish to the opposite side of the river, for the purpose of 
manuring those fields from which the early dura crop had 
just been gathered in. Thus, curiously enough, the mud left 
by some inundation of two or three thousand years ago 
comes at last to the use from which it was then diverted, and 
is found to be more fertilising than the new deposit. At 
Kasr es Syad, a little farther on, we came to one of the well- 
known '' bad bits " — a place where the bed of the river is 
full of sunken rocks, and sailing is impossible. Here the 
men were half the day punting the dahabeeyah over the dan- 
gerous part, while we grubbed among the mounds of what 
was once the ancient city of Chenoboscion. These remains, 
which cover a large superficial area and consist entirely of 
crude brick foundations, are very interesting, and in good 
preservation. We traced the ground-plans of several houses ; 
followed the passages by which they were separated ; and 
observed many small arches which seemed built on too 
small a scale for doors or windows, but for which it was 
difficult to account in any other way. Brambles and Aveeds 
were growing in these deserted enclosures ; while rubbish- 
heaps, excavated pits, and piles of broken pottery divided 
the ruins and made the work of exploration difficult. We 
looked in vain for the dilapidated quay and sculptured blocks 
mentioned in Wilkinson's General Vieto of Egypt ; but if the 
foundation stones of the new sugar-factory close against the 
mooring-place could speak, they would no doubt explain the 
mystery. We saw nothing, indeed, to show that Chenobos- 
cion had contained any stone structures whatever, save the 
broken shaft of one small granite column. 

The village of Kasr es Syad consists of a cluster of mud 
huts and a sugar factory ; but the factory was idle that day, 
and the village seemed half deserted. The view here is par- 
ticularly fine. About a couple of miles to the southward, the 
mountains, in magnificent procession, came down again at 
right angles to the river, and thence reach away in long 
ranges of precipitous headlands. The plain, terminating 
abruptly against the foot of this gigantic barrier, opens 
back eastward to the remotest horizon — an undulating sea 
of glistening sand, bordered by a chaotic middle distance of 
mounded ruins. Nearest of all, a narrow foreground of cul- 
tivated soil, green with young crops and watered by frequent 



SIIJT TO DENBEBAH. Hi" 

sMdufs, extends along the river-side to the foot of the moun- 
tains. A sheykh's tomb shaded by a single dom palm is con- 
spicuous on the bank ; while far away, planted amid the 
solitary sands, we see a large Coptic convent with many 
cupolas ; a cemetery full of Christian graves ; and a little 
oasis of date palms indicating the presence of a spring. 

The chief interest of this scene, however, centres in the 
ruins ; and these — looked upon from a little distance, black- 
ened, desolate, half-buried obscured every now and then, 
when the wind swept over them, by swirling clouds of dust 
— reminded us of the villages we had seen not two years 
before, half-overwhelmed and yet smoking in the midst of a 
lava-torrent below Vesuvius. 




KASR ES SYAD. 



We now have the full moon again, making night more 
beautiful than day. Sitting on deck for hours after the sun 
had gone down, when the boat glided gently on with half- 
filled sail and the force of the wind was spent, we used to 
wonder if in all the world there was another climate in which 
the effect of moonlight was so magical. To say that every 
object far or near was visible as distinctly as by day, yet 
more tenderly, is to say nothing. It was not only form that 
was defined ; it Avas not only light and shadow that were 
vivid — it was colour that was present. Colour neither 
deadened nor changed ; but softened, glowing, spiritualised. 
The amber sheen of the sand-island in the middle of the 
river, the sober green of the palm-grove, the Little Lady's 
turquoise-coloured hood, were clear to the sight and relatively 
true in tone. The oranges showed through the bars of the 
crate like nuggets of pure gold. L's crimson shawl glowed 
with a warmer dye than it ever wore by day. The moun- 



118 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

tains were flushed as if in the light of sunset. Of all the 
natural phenomena that we beheld in the course of the journey, 
I remember none that surprised us more than this. We 
could scarcely believe at first that it was not some effect of 
afterglow, or some miraculous aurora of the East. But the 
sun had nothing to do with that flush upon tlie mountains. 
The glow was in the stone, and the moonlight but revealed 
the local colour. 

For some days before they came in sight, we had been 
eagerly looking for the Theban hills ; and now, after a night 
of rapid sailing, we woke one morning to find the sun rising 
on the wrong side of the boat, the favourable wind dead 
against us, and a picturesque chain of broken peaks upon our 
starboard bow. By these signs we knew that we must have 
come to the great bend in the river between How and Keneh, 
and that these new mountains, so much more varied in form 
than those of Middle Egypt, must be the mountains behind 
Denderah. Tliey seemed to lie upon the eastern bank, but 
that was an illusion which the map disproved, and which 
lasted only till the great corner was fairly turned. To turn 
tliat corner, however, in the teeth of wind and current, was 
no easy task, and cost us two long days of hard tracking. 

At a point about ten miles below Denderah, we saw some 
thousands of fellaheen at work amid clouds of sand upon 
the embankments of a new canal. They swarmed over the 
mounds like ants, and the continuous murmur of their voices 
came to us across the river like the humming of innumerable 
bees. Others, following the path along the bank, were pour- 
ing towards the spot in an unbroken stream. The Nile must 
here be nearly half a mile in breadth ; but the engineers in 
European dress, and the overseers with long sticks in their 
hands, were plainly distinguishable by the help of a glass. 
The tents in which these officials were camping out during 
the progress of the work gleamed white among the palms by 
the river-side. Such scenes must have been common enough 
in the old days when a conquering Pharaoh, returning from 
Libya or the land of Kush, set his captives to raise a dyke, 
or excavate a lake, or quarry a mountain. The Israelites 
building the massive walls of Pithom and Raineses with 
bricks of their own making, must have presented exactly 
such a spectacle. 

That we were witnessing a case of forced labour, could 
not be doubted. Those thousands yonder had most certainly 
been drafted off in gangs from hundreds of distant villages, 



SitjT TO DENDEEAH, 119 

and were but little better off, for the time being, than the 
captives of the ancient Empire. In all cases of forced labour 
under the present regime, however, it seems that the labourer 
is paid, though very insufficiently, for his unwilling toil; and 
that his captivity only lasts so long as the work for which 
he has been pressed remains in progress. In some cases the 
term of service is limited to three or four months, at the end 
of which time the men are supposed to be returned in barges 
towed by Government steam-tugs. It too often happens, 
nevertheless, that the poor souls are left to get back how 
they can ; and thus many a husband and father either 
perishes by the way, or is driven to take service in some vil- 
lage far from home. Meanwhile his wife and children, be- 
ing scantily supported by the Sheykh el Beled, fall into a 
condition of semi-serfdom ; and his little patch of ground, 
left unfilled through seed-time and harvest, passes after the 
next inundation into the hands of a stranger. 

But there is another side to this question of forced labour. 
Water must be had in Egypt, no matter at what cost. If 
the land is not sufficiently irrigated, the crops fail and the 
nation starves. Now, the frequent construction of canals 
has from immemorial time been reckoned among the first 
duties of an Egyptian ruler ; but it is a duty which cannot 
be performed without the willing or unwilling co-operation 
of several thousand workmen. Those who are best acquainted 
with the character and temper of the fellah maintain the 
hopelessness of looking to him for voluntary labour of 
this description. Frugal, patient, easily contented as he is, 
no promise of wages, however high, would tempt him from 
his native village. What to him are the needs of a district 
six or seven hundred miles away ? His own shaduf is 
enough for his own patch, and so long as he can raise his 
three little crops a year, neither he nor his family will starve. 
How, then, are these necessary public works to be carried 
out, unless by means of the corvee ? M. About has put an 
ingenious summary of this " other-side " argument into the 
mouth of his ideal fellah. " It is not the Emperor," says 
Ahmed to the Frenchman, " who causes the rain to descend 
upon your lands; it is the west wind — and the benefit thus 
conferred upon you exacts no penalty of manual labour. 
But in Egypt, where the rain from heaven falls scarcely 
three times ii the year, it is the prince who supplies its place 
to us by distributing the waters of the Nile. This can only 
be done by the work of men's hands ; and it is therefore to 



120 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the interest of all that the hands of all should be at his 
disposal." 

We regarded it, I think, as an especial piece of good for- 
tune, when we found ourselves becalmed next day within three 
or four miles of Denderah. Abydos comes first in order ac- 
cording to the map ; but then the Temples lie seven or eight 
miles from the river, and as we happened just thereabouts to 
be making some ten miles an hour, we put off the excursion 
till our return. Here, however, the ruins lay comparatively 
near at hand, and in such a position that we could approach 
them from below and rejoin our dahabeeyah a few miles 
higher up the river. So, leaving E-eis Hassan to track 
against the current, we landed at the first convenient point, 
and finding neither donkeys nor guides at hand, took an 
escort of three or four sailors, and set off on foot. 

The way was long, the day was hot, and we had only the 
map to go by. Having climbed the steep bank and skirted 
an extensive palm-grove, we found ourselves in a country 
without paths or roads of any kind. The soil, squared off 
as usual like a gigantic chess-board, was traversed by hun- 
dreds of tiny water-channels, between which we had to steer 
our course as best we could. Presently the last belt of palms 
was passed — the plain, green with young corn and level as 
a lake, widened out to the foot of the mountains — and the 
Temple, islanded in that sea of rippling emerald, rose up 
before us upon its platform of blackened mounds. 

It was still full two miles away ; but it looked enormous 
— showing from this distance as a massive, low-browed, 
sharply defined mass of dead-white masonry. The walls 
sloped in slightly towards the top ; and the facade appeared 
to be supported on eight square piers, with a large doorway 
in the centre. If sculptured ornament, or cornice, or pic- 
tured legend enriched those walls, we were too far off to dis- 
tinguish them. All looked strangely naked and solemn — 
more like a tomb than a temple. 

Nor was the surrounding scene less deathlike in its soli- 
tude. Not a tree, not a hut, not a living form broke the 
green monotony of the plain. Behind the Temple, but 
divided from it by a farther space of mounded ruins, rose the 
mountains — pinky, aerial, with sheeny sand-drifts heaped 
in the hollows of their bare buttresses, and spaces of soft 
blue shadow in their misty chasms. Where the range re- 
ceded, a long vista of glittering desert opened to the Libyan 
horizon. 



SIUT TO BENDERAE. 



121 







122 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Then as we drew nearer, coming by and by to a raised 
causeway which apparently connected tlie mounds with some 
point down by the river, the details of the Temple gradually 
emerged into distinctness. We could now see the curve and 
nnder-shadow of the cornice ; and a small object in front of 
the fa9ade wliich looked at first sight like a monolithic altar, 
resolved itself into a massive gateway of the kind known as 
a single pylon. Nearer still, among some low outlying 
mounds, we came upon fragments of sculptured capitals and 
mutilated statues half-buried in rank grass — upon a series 
of stagnant nitre-tanks and deserted workshops — upon the 
telegraph poles and wires which here come striding along 
the edge of the desert and vanish southward with messages 
for Nubia and the Soudan. 

Egypt is the land of nitre. It is found wherever a crude- 
brick mound is disturbed or an antique stone structure de- 
molished. The Nile mud is strongly impregnated with it; 
and in Nubia we used to find it lying in thick talc-like flakes 
upon the surface of rocks far above the present level of the 
inundation. These tanks at Denderah had been sunk, we 
were told, Avhen the great Temple was excavated by Abba^ 
Pasha more than twenty years ago. The nitre then found 
was utilised out of hand ; washed and crystallised in the 
tanks ; and converted into gunpowder in the adjacent work- 
shops. The telegraph wires are more recent intruders, and 
the work of the Khedive ; but one longed to put them out of 
sight, to pulldown the gunpowder sheds, and to fill up the 
tanks with debris. For what had the arts of modern Avar- 
fare or the wonders of modern science to do with Hathor, the 
Lady of Beauty and the Western Shades, the Nurse of Horus, 
the Egyptian Aphrodite, to whom yonder mountain of 
wrought stone and all these wastes were sacred? 

We were by this time near enough to see that the square 
piers of the fa9ade were neither square nor piers, but huge 
round columns with human-headed capitals ; and that the 
walls, instead of being plain and tomb-like, were covered 
with an infinite multitude of sculptured figures. The pylon 
— rich with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, but disfigured by 
myriads of tiny wasps' nests, like clustered mud-bubbles — 
now towered high above our heads, and led to a walled avenue 
cut direct through the mounds, and sloping downwards to 
the main entrance of the Temple. 

Not, however, till we stood immediately under those 
ponderous columns, looking down upon the paved floor below 



SIUT TO BENBEltAlI. 123 

and up to the huge cornice that projected overhead like the 
crest of an impending wave, did we realise the immense pro- 
portions of the building. Lofty as it looked from a distance, 
we now found that it was only the interior that had been 
excavated, and that not more than two-thirds of its actual 
height were visible above the mounds. The level of the 
avenue was, indeed, at its lowest part full twenty feet above 
that of the first great hall ; and we had still a steep tempo- 
rary staircase to go down before reaching the original pave- 
ment. 

The effect of the portico as one stands at the top of the 
staircase is one of overwhelming majesty. Its breadth, its 
lieight, the massiveness of its parts, exceed in grandeur all 
that one has been anticipating throughout the long two miles 
of approach. The immense girth of the columns, the huge 
screens which connect them, the ponderous cornice jutting 
overhead, confuse the imagination, and in the absence of 
given measurements •' appear, perhaps, even more enormous 
than they are. Looking up to the architrave, we see a kind 
of Egyptian Panathenaic procession of carven priests and 
warriors, some with standards and some with musical instru- 
ments. The winged globe, depicted upon a gigantic scale in 
the curve of the cornice, seems to hover above the central 
doorway. Hieroglyphs, emblems, strange forms of Kings 
and Gods, cover every foot of wall-space, frieze, and pillar. 
Nor does this wealth of surface-sculpture tend in any way to 
diminish the general effect of size. It would seem, on the 
contrary, as if complex decorations were in this instance the 
natural complement to simplicity of form. Every group, 
every inscription, appears to be necessary and in its place ; 
an essential part of the building it helps to adorn. Most of 
these details are as perfect as on the day when the last 
workman went his waj'', and the architect saw his design 
completed. Time has neither marred the surface of the 
stone nor blunted the work of the chisel. Such injury as 
they have sustained is from the hand of man ; and in no 
country has the hand of man achieved more and destroyed 
more than in Egypt. The Persians overthrew the master- 
pieces of the Pharaohs ; the Copts mutilated the temples of 
the Ptolemies and Caesars ; the Arabs stripped the pyramids 

1 Sir G. Wilkinson states the total length of the Temple to be 93 paces, 
or 220 feet; and the width of the portico .50 paces. Murray gives no meas- 
urements; neither does Mariette Bey in his delightful little " Itineraire ; " 
neither does Fergusson, nor Champollion. nor any other writer to whose 
works I liave had access. 



124 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



and carried Memphis away piecemeal. Here at Denderah 
we have an example of Graeco-Egyptian work and early 
Christian fanaticism. Begun by Ptolemy XI,^ and bearing 

upon its latest ovals the 
name and style of Nero, 
the present building was 
still comparatively new 
when, in a.d. 379, the an- 
cient religion was abol- 
ished by the edict of 
Theodosius. It Avas then 
the most gorgeous as well 
as the most recent of all 
those larger temples built 
during the prosperous for- 
eign rule of the last seven 
hundred years. It stood, 
surrounded by groves of 
palm and acacia, within the 
precincts of a vast enclo- 
sure, the walls of which, 
1000 feet in length, 35 feet 
in height, and 15 feet 
thick, are still traceable. 
A dromos, now buried un- 
der twenty feet of debris, 
led from the pylon to tlie 
portico. Tlie pylon is there 
still, a partial ruin ; but the 
Temple, with its roof, its 
staircases, and its secret 
treasure-crypts, is in all 
essential respects as per- 
fect as on the day when 
its spleiulour was given 
over to the spoilers. One 
can easily imagine how these spoilers sacked and ravaged 
all before them ; how they desecrated the sacred places, 

1 The names of Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius, Domitian, Claudius, and 
Nero are found in the royal ovals; the oldest being those of Ptolemy XI, 
the founder of the present edifice, which was, however, rebuilt upon the 
site of a succession of older buildings, of which the most ancient dated 
back as far as the reign of Kliufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid. 
This fact, and the still more interesting fact that the oldest structure of all 
was believed to belong to the inconceivably remote period oitheHorshesu, 




Cl.KOPATUA. 



SIUT TO BEN DERAIL 125 

aiul cast down the statues of the Goddess, and divided the 
treasures of the sanctuary. They did not, it is true, commit 
such wholesale destruction as the Persian invaders of nine 
hundred years before; but they were merciless iconoclasts, 
and hacked away the face of every figure within easy reach 
both inside and outside the building. 

Among those wliicli escaped, however, is the famous exter- 
nal bas-relief of Cleopatra on tlie back of the Temple. This 
curious sculpture is now banked up with rubbish for its bet- 
ter preservation, and can no longer be seen by travellers. It 
was, however, admirably photograiihed some years ago by 
Signor Beati ; which photograph is faithfully reproduced in 
the annexed engraving. Cleopatra is here represented with a 
headdress combining the attributes of three goddesses ; 
namely the Vulture of Maut (the head of which is modelled 
in a masterly way), the horned disc of Hathor, and the throne 
of Isis. The falling mass below the headdress is intended to 
represent hair dressed according to tiie Egyptian fashion, in 
an infinite number of small plaits, each finished off with an 
ornamental tag. The women of Egypt and Nubia wear their 
hair so to this day, and un plait it, I am sorry to say, not 
oftener than once in every eight or ten weeks. The Nubian 
girls fasten each separate tail with a lump of Nile mud 
daubed over with yellow ochre ; but Queen Cleopatra's silken 
tresses were probably tipped with gilded wax or gum. 

It is difficult to know where decorative sculpture ends and 
portraiture begins in a work of this epoch. We cannot even 
be certain that a portrait was intended ; though the intro- 
duction of the royal oval in which the name of Cleopatra 
(Klaupatra) is spelt with its vowel sounds in full, would 

or " followei-s of Horus "{i.e. the petty chiefs, or princes, who ruled in Egypt 
before the foundation of the first monarcliy), is recorded in the following 
reniarkaLij inscription discovered by Mariette in one of the cryi)ts con- 
structed in the thickness of the walls of the present temple. Tlie first 
text relates to certain festivals to be celebrated in honour of Hathor, and 
states that all the ordained ceremonies had been performed by Kinsr 
Thothmes III (XVIIIth dynasty) " in memory of his mother, Hathor of 
Deiiderah. And they found the great fundamental rules of Denderah in 
ancient writing, written on goat-skin in the time of the Followers of 
Horns. This was found in the inside of a brick wall during the reign of 
KingPepi (Vlth dynasty)." In the same crypt, another and a more brief 
inscription runs thus: — "Great fundamental rule of Denderah. Resto- 
rations done by Thothmes III, according to what was found in ancient 
writing of the time of King Khufu." Heretipon Mariette remarks — 
" The temple of Denderah is not, then, one of the most modern in Egypt, 
except in so far as it was constructed by one of the later Lagidie. Its 
origin is literally lost ii\ the night of time." See DeiuUrali, Deacriptioji 
Geacralc, chaj). i. ])p. 55, 5t). 



126 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

seem to point that ^ya_y. If it is a portrait, then large allovv'- 
ance must be made for conventional treatment. The fleshi- 
ness of the features and the intolerable simper are common 
to every head of the Ptolemaic period. The ear, too, is pat- 
tern work, and the drawing of the figure is ludicrous. Man- 
nerism apart, however, the face wants for neither individu- 
ality nor beauty. Cover the mouth, and you have an almost 
faultless profile. The chin and throat are also quite lovely ; 
while the whole face, suggestive of cruelty, subtlety, and 
voluptuousness, carries with it an indefinable impression not 
only of portraiture, but of likeness. 

It is not without something like a shock that one first sees 
the unsightly havoc wrought upon the Hathor-headed col- 
umns of the fa9ade at Denderah. The massive folds of head- 
gear are there ; the ears, erect and pointed like those of a 
heifer, are there ; but of the benignant face of the Goddess 
not a feature remains. Ampere, describing these columns in 
one of his earliest letters from Egypt, speaks of them as be- 
ing still " brilliant with colours that time had had no power 
to efface." Time, however, m\ist have been unusally busy 
during the thirty years that have gone by since then ; for 
though we presently found several instances of painted bas- 
reliefs in the small inner chambers, I do not remember to 
have observed any remains of colour (save here and there a 
faint trace of yellow ochre) on the external decorations. 

Without, all was sunshine and splendour ; within, all was 
silence and mystery. A heavy, death-like smell, as of long- 
imprisoned gases, met us on the threshold. By the half-light 
that strayed in through the portico, we could see vague out- 
lines of a forest of giant columns rising out of the gloom 
below and vanishing into the gloom above. Beyond these 
again appeared shadowy vistas of successive halls leading 
away into depths of impenetrable darkness. It required no 
great courage to go down those stairs and explore those 
depths with a party of fellow-travellers ; but it would have 
been a gruesome place to venture into alone. 

Seen from within, the portico shows as a vast hall, fifty 
feet in height and supported on twenty-four Hathor-headed 
columns. Six of these, being engaged in the screen, form 
part of the fa9ade, and are the same upon which we liave 
been looking from without. By degrees, as our eyes become 
used to the twilight, we see here and there a capital which 
still preserves the vague likeness of a gigantic female face ; 
while, dimly visible on every wall, pillar, and doorway, a 



SIUT TO DENDEHAR. 127 

multitude of fantastic forms — hawk-headed, ibis-headed, 
oow-headed, mitred, phimed, holding aloft strange emblems, 
seated on thrones, performing mysterious rites — seem to 
emerge from their places, like things of life. Looking up 
to the ceiling, now smoke-blackened and defaced, we discover 
elaborate paintings of scarabaei, winged globes, and zodiacal 
emblems divided by borders of intricate Greek patterns, the 
iiravailing colours of which are verditer and chocolate. 
l>:inds of hieroglyphic inscriptions, of royal ovals, of Hatlior 
heads, of mitred hawks, of lion-lieaded chimeras, of divinities 
and kings in bas-relief, cover the shafts of the great columns 
from top to bottoui ; and even here, every accessible face, 
however small, has been laboriously mutilated. 

Bewildered at first sight of these profuse and mysterious 
decorations, we wander round and round; going on from the 
first hall to the second, from the second to the third; and 
plunging into deeper darkness at every step. We have been 
reading about these gods and emblems for weeks past — we 
have studied the plan of the Temple beforehand; yet now 
that we are actually here, our book knowledge goes for noth- 
ing, and we feel as hopelessly ignorant as if we had been 
suddenly landed in a new world. IS^ot till we have got over 
this first feeling of confusion — not till, resting awhile on 
the base of one of the columns, we again open out the plan 
of the building, do we begin to realise the purport of the 
sculptures by which we are surrounded. 

The ceremonial of Egyptian worship was essentially pro- 
cessional. Herein we have the central idea of every Temple, 
and the key to its construction. It was bound to contain 
store-chambers in which were kept vestments, instruments, 
divine emblems, and the like; laboratories for the prepara- 
tion of perfumes and unguents ; treasuries for the safe cus- 
tody of holy vessels and precious offerings ; chambers for 
the reception and purification of tribute in kind ; halls for 
the assembling and marshalling of priests and functionaries; 
and, for processional purposes, corridors, staircases, court- 
yards, cloisters, and vast enclosures planted with avenues of 
trees and surrounded by walls which hedged in with invio- 
lable secrecy the solemn rites of the priesthood. 

In this plan, it will be seen, there is no provision made 
for anything in the form of public worship ; but then an 
Egyptian Temple was not a place for public worship. It 
was a treasure-house, a sacristy, a royal oratory, a place of 
preparation, of consecration, of sacerdotal privacy. There, 



128 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

in costly shrines, dwelt the divine images. There they were 
robed and unrobed ; perfumed with incense ; visited and 
worshipped by the King. On certain great days of the kal- 
endar, as on tlie occasion of the festival of the new year, or 
the panegyrics of the local gods, these images were brought 
out, paraded along the corridors of the temple, carried round 
the roof, and borne with waving of banners, and chanting of 
hymns, and burning of incense, through the sacred groves 
of th'i enclosure. Probably none were admitted to these cere- 
monies save persons of royal or priestly birth. To the rest 
of the community, all that took place within those massy 
walls was envelo})ed in mjstery. It may be questioned, 
indeed, whether the great mass of the people had any kind of 
personal religion. They may not have been rigidly excluded 
from the temple-precincts, iDut they seem to have been al- 
lowed no participation in the worship of the Gods. If now 
and then, on high festival days, they beheld the sacred 
bark of the deity carried in procession round the temenos, or 
caught a glimpse of moving figures and glittering ensigns in 
the pillared dusk of the Hypostyle Hall, it was all they ever 
beheld of the solemn services of their church. 

The Temple of Denderah consists of a portico ; a hall of 
entrance ; a hall of assembly ; a third hall, which may be 
called the hall of the sacred boats ; one small ground floor 
chapel ; and upwards of twenty side chambers of various 
sizes, most of which are totally dark. Each one of these 
halls and chambers bears the sculptured record of its use. 
Hundreds of tableaux in bas-relief, thousands of elaborate 
hieroglyphic inscriptions, cover every foot of available space 
on wall and ceiling and soffit, on doorway and column, and 
on the lining-slabs of passages and staircases. These pre- 
cious texts contain, amid much that is mystical and tedious, 
an extraordinary wealth of indirect history. Here we find 
programmes of ceremonial observances ; numberless legends 
of the Gods ; chronologies of Kings with their various titles ; 
registers of weights and measures ; catalogues of offerings : 
recipes for the preparation of oils and essences ; records of 
repairs and restorations done to the Temple ; geographical 
lists of cities and provinces ; inventories of treasure, and 
the like. The hall of assembly contains a kalendar of fes- 
tivals, and sets forth with studied precision the rites to be 
performed on each recurring anniversary. On the ceiling 
of the portico we find an astronomical zodiac ; on the walls 
of a small temple on the roof, the whole history of the resur- 




JEIIDERAH. 



SIUT TO BENDER AH. 129 

rectiou of Osiris, together with the order of prayer for the 
twelve hours of the uight, and a kalendar of the festivals of 
Osiris in all the principal cities of Upper and Lower Egypt. 
Seventy years ago, these inscriptions were the puzzle and de- 
spair of the learned ; but since modern science has plucked 
out the heart of its mystery, the whole Temple lies before us 
an open volume filled to overflowing with strange and quaint 
and heterogeneous matter — a Talmud in sculptured stone. ^ 
Given such help as Mariette's handbook affords, one can 
trace out most of these curious things, and identify the uses 
of every hall and chamber thi'oughout tlie building. The 
King, in the double character of Pharaoh and high priest, is 
the hero of every sculptured scene. Wearing sometimes the 
truncated crown of Lower Egypt, sometimes the helmet-crown 
of Upper Egypt, and sometimes the pschent, which is a 
combination of both, he figures in every tableau and heads 
every procession. Beginning with the sculptures of the por- 
tico, we see him arrive, preceded by his five royal standards. 
He wears his long robe; his sandals are on his feet; he 
carries his staff in his hand. Two goddesses receive him at 
the door and conduct him into the presence of Thoth, the 
ibis-headed, and Horus, the hawk-headed, who pour upon him 
a double stream of the waters of life. Thus purified, he is 
crowned by the Goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt, and 
by them consigned to the local deities of Thebes and Heli- 
opolis, who usher him into the supreme presence of Hathor. 
He then presents various offerings and recites certain prayers ; 
whereupon the goddess promises him length of da3's, ever- 
lasting renown, and other good things. We next see him, 
always with the same smile and always in the same attitude, 
doing homage to Osiris, to Horus and other divinities. He 
presents them witli flowers, wine, bread, incense; while they 
in return promise him life, joy, abundant harvests, victory, 
and the love of his people. These pretty speeches — chefs- 
tV amove of diplomatic style and models of elegant flattery — 
are repeated over and over again in scores of hieroglypliic 
groups. Mariette, however, sees in them something more than 
the language of tlie court grafted upon the language of the 
hierarchy ; he detects the language of the schools, and dis- 
covers in the utterances here ascribed to the King and the 

1 See Mariette's Dendirah, which contains the whole of these multi- 
tudinous inscriptions in IGfi plates; also a selection of some of the most 
interesting in Brussch and Ddmichen's ^ec!<ei/ de Monuments Egyptiena 
and Geographische Inscliri/Lcn, 18()2-y-5-G. 



130 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Gods a reflection of that contemporary worship of the Beauti- 
ful, the Good, and tlie True, wliich characterised the teaching 
of the Alexandrian Museum.^ 

Passing on from the portico to the Hall of Assembly, we 
enter a region of still dimmer twilight, beyond which all is 
dark. In the side-chambers, Avhere the heat is intense and the 
atmosphere stifling, we can see only by the help of lighted 
candles. These rooms are about twenty feet in length ; sepa- 
rate, like prison cells ; and perfectly dark. The sculptures 
which cover the walls are, however, as numerous as those in 
the outer halls, and indicate in each instance the purpose for 
which the room was designed. Thus in the laboratories we 
find bas-reliefs of flasks and vases, and figures carrying 
])erfuuie-bottles of the familiar ary hallos form ; in the trib- 
ute-chambers, offerings of lotus-lilies, wheat sheaves, maize, 
grapes, and pomegranates ; in the oratories of Isis, Amen, and 
Sekhet, representations of these divinities enthroned, and 
receiving the homage of the King; while in the treasury, 
both King and Queen appear laden with precious gifts of 
caskets, necklaces, pectoral ornaments, sistrums, and the like. 
It would seem that the image-breakers had no time to spare 
for these dark cells ; for here the faces and figures are un- 
mutilated, and in some places even the original colouring re- 
mains in excellent preservation. The complexion of the 
goddesses, for instance, is painted of a light buff; the King's 
skin is dark-red ; that of Amen, blue. Isis wears a rich robe 
of the well-known Indian pine-pattern; Sekhet figures in a 
many-coloured garment curiously diapered; Amen is clad in 
red and green chain armour. The skirts of the goddesses are 
inconceivably scant ; but they are rich in jewellery, and their 

1 Hathor (or more correctly Hat-hor, i.e. the abode of Horus) is not 
merely the Aphrodite of ancient Egypt: she is tlie pupil of the eye of the 
Sun: she is the goddess of that beneficent planet whose rising heralds the 
waters of the inundation ; she represents tlie eternal youth of nature, and 
is the direct personification of the Beautiful. She is also Goddess of Truth. 
" I offer the Truth to thee, O Goddess of Denderali ! " says the King, in 
one of the inscriptions of the sanctuary of the Sistrum; "for truth is thy 
work, and thou thyself art Truth." Lastly, lier emblem is the Sistrum, 
and the sound of the Sistrum, according to Plutarch, was supposed to 
terrify and expel Typlion (the evil princi[)le); just .as in mediaeval times 
tlie ringing of charch-bells was supposed to scare Beelzebub and his crew. 
From this point of view, the Sistrum becomes typical of the triumph of 
Good over Evil. Mariette, in his analysis of the decorations and inscrip- 
tions of this temple, points out how the builders were influenced by the 
prevailing pliilosophy of the age, and how they veiled the Platonism of 
Alexandria beneath the symbolism of the ancient religion. The Hat-hor 
of T3enderah was in fact worshipped in a sense unknown to the Egyptians 
of pre-Ptolemaic times. 



SIUT TO DEN DEBAR. 131 

headdresses, necklaces, and bracelets are full of minute and 
interesting detail. In one of the four oratories dedicated to 
Sekhet, the King is depicted in the act of offering a pec- 
toral ornament of so rich and elegant a design that, had there 
been time and daylight to spare, the Writer would fain have 
copied it. 

In the centre room at the extreme end of the Temple, ex- 
actly opposite the main entrance, lies the oratory of Hathor. 
This dark chamber, into which no ray of daylight has ever 
penetrated, contains the sacred niche, the Holy of Holies, in 
which was kept the great Golden Sistrum of the Goddess. 
The King alone was privileged to take out that mysterious 
emblem. Having done so, he enclosed it in a costly shrine, 
covered it with a thick veil, and placed it in one of the sacred 
boats of which we find elaborate representations sculptured on 
the walls of the hall in which they were kept. These boats, 
which were constructed of cedar-wood, gold, and silver, were 
intended to be hoisted on wrought poles, and so carried in 
procession on the shoulders of the priests. The niche is still 
there — a mere hole in the wall, some three feet square and 
about eight feet from the ground. 

Thus, candle in hand, Ave make the circuit of these outer 
chambers. In each doorway, besides the place cut out for the 
bolt, we find a circular hole drilled above and a quadrant- 
shaped hollow below, where once upon a time the pivot of the 
door turned in its socket. The paved floors, torn up by 
treasure-seekers, are full of treacherous holes and blocks of 
broken stone. The ceilings are very lofty. In the corridors a 
dim twilight reigns ; but all is pitch-dark beyond these gloomy 
thresholds. Hurrying along by the light of a few flaring 
candles, one cannot but feel oppressed by the strangeness and 
awfulness of the place. We speak with bated breath, and 
even our chattering Arabs for once are silent. The very air 
tastes as if it had been imprisoned liere for centuries. 

Finally, we take the staircase on the northern side of the 
Temple, in order to go up to the roof. Nothing that we have 
yet seen surprises and delights us so much, I think, as this 
staircase. 

We had hitherto been tracing in their order all the prep- 
arations for a great religious ceremony. We have seen the 
King enter the Temple ; undergo the symbolical purification ; 
receive the twofold crown ; and say his prayers to each divinity 
in turn. We have followed him into the laboratories, the 
oratories, and the Holy of Holies. All that he has yet done, 



132 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

however, is preliminary. The pi-ocession i^ yet to come, and 
liere we have it. Here, sculptured on the walls of this dark 
staircase, the crowning ceremony of Egyptian worship is 
brought before our eyes in all its details. Here, one by one, 
we have the standard-bearers, the hierophants with the offer- 
ings, the priests, the whole long, wonderful procession, with 
the King marching at its head. Fresh and uninjured as if 
they had but just left the hand of the sculptor, these figures 
— each in his habit as he lived, each with his foot upon the 
step — mount with us as we mount, and go beside us all the 
way. Their attitudes are so natural, their forms so roundly 
cut, that one could almost fancy them in motion as the lights 
flicker by. Surely there must be some one weird night in the 
year when they step out from their places, and take up t.ie 
next verse of their chanted hymn, and, to the sound of in- 
struments long mute and songs long silent, pace the moonlit 
roof in ghostly order ! 

The sun is already down and the crimson light has faded, 
when at length we emerge upon that vast terrace. The roof- 
ing-stones are gigantic. Striding to and fro over some of the 
biggest, our Idle Man finds several that measure seven paces 
ill length by four in breadth. In yonder distant corner, like a 
little stone lodge in a vast courtyard, stands a small temple 
supported on Hathor-headed columns ; while at the eastern 
end, forming a second and loftier stage, rises the roof of the 
portico. 

Meanwhile the afterglow is fading. The mountains are 
yet clothed in an atmosphere of tender half-light ; but mys- 
terious shadows are fast creeping over the plain, and the 
mounds of the ancient city lie at our feet, confused and tum- 
bled, like the waves of a dark sea. How high it is here — 
how lonely — how silent ! Hark that thin plaintive cry ! It 
is the wail of a night-wandering jackal. See how dark it is 
yonder, in the direction of the river ! Quick, quick I We 
have lingered too long. We must be gone at once ; for we 
are already benighted. 

We ought to have gone down by way of the opposite stair- 
case (which is lined witli sculptures of the descending pro- 
cession) and out through the Temple ; but there is no time to 
do anything but scramble down by a breach in the wall at a 
point where the mounds yet lie heaped against the south side 
of the building. And now the dusk steals on so rapidly that 
before we reach the bottom we can hardly see where to tread. 
The huge side-wall of the portico seems to tower above us to 



SIUT TO DENBEllAII. 



133 



the very heavens. We catch a glimpse of two colossal 
figures, one lion-headed and the other headless, sitting outside 
Avith their backs to the Temple. Then, making with all 
speed for the open plain, Ave clamber over scattered blocks 
and among shapeless mounds. Presently night overtakes us. 
The mountains disappear ; tlie Temple is blotted out ; and 
Ave have only the faint starlight to guide us. We stumble on, 
however, keeping all close together; firing a gun every noAV 
and then, in the hope of being heard by those in the boats ; 
and as thoroughly and undeniably lost as the Babes in the 
Wood. 




SHEYKH SELIM. 



At last, just as some are beginning to knock up and all to 
despair, Talhamy fires his last cartridge. An answering shot 
replies from near by ; a wandering light appears in the dis- 
tance ; and presently a Avhole bevy of dancing lanterns and 
friendly broAvn faces comes gleaming out from among a plan- 
tation of sugar-canes, to Avelcome and guide us home. Dear, 
sturdy, faithful little Reis Hassan, honest Khalifeh, laugh- 
ing Salame, gentle Mehemet Ali, and Musa " black but 
comely" — they Avere all there. What a shaking of hands 
there was — what a gleaming of white teeth — what a 
shoAver of mutually unintelligible congratulations ! For my 
own part, I may say Avith truth that I was never much more 
rejoiced at a meeting in my life. 



134 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER VITI. 

THEBES AND KARNAK. 

Coming on deck the third inorniiig after leaving Denderah, 
we found the dahabeeyah decorated with ])alni-branches, our 
sailors in their holiday turbans, and Reis Hassan en grande 
tenne ; that is to say in shoes and stockings, which he only 
wore on very great occasions. 

" Neharak-sa'id — good morning — Luxor ! " said he, all in 
one breath. 

It was a hot, hazj^ morning, with dim ghosts of mountains 
glowing through the mist, and a warm wind blowing. 

We ran to the side ; looked out eagerly ; but could see 
nothing. Still the captain smiled and nodded : and the 
sailors ran hither and thither, sweeping and garnishing ; and 
Egendi, to whom his worst enemy could not have imputed 
the charge of bashfulness, said '-Luxor — kharuf^ — all 
right ! " every time he came near us. 

We had read and dreamed so much about Thebes, and it 
had always seemed so far away, that but for this delicate 
allusion to the promised sheep, we could hardly have be- 
lieved we were really drawing nigh unto those famous shores. 
About ten, however, the mist was lifted away like a curtain, 
and we saw to the left a rich plain studded with palm-groves ; 
to tlie right a broad margin of cultivated lands bounded by a 
bold range of limestone mountains ; and on the farthest hori- 
zon another range, all grey and shadowy. 

" Karnak — Gournah — Luxor!" says Reis Hassan tri- 
umphantly, pointing in every direction at once. Talhamy 
tries to show us Medinet Habu and the Memnonium. The 
Painter vows he can see the heads of the sitting Colossi and 
the entrance to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. 

We, meanwhile, stare bewildered, incredulous ; seeing none 
of these things ; finding it difficult, indeed, to believe that 
any one else sees them. The river widens away before us . 
1 Arabic " kharuf," pronounced " haroof " — English, slieep, 



THEBES AND KARNAK. 135 

the flats are green on either side ; the mountains are pierced 
with terraces of rock-cut tombs ; while far away inland, ap- 
parently on the verge of the desert, we see here a clump of 
sycamores — yonder a dark hillock — midway between both 
a confused heap of something that may be either fallen rock 
or fallen masonry ; but nothing tliat looks like a Temple, 
nothing to indicate that we are already within recognisable 
distance of the grandest ruins in the world. 

Presently, however, as the boat goes on, a massive, window- 
less structure which looks (Heaven preserve us !) just like a 
brand-new fort or prison, towers up above the palm-groves to 
the left. Tins, we are told, is one of the ])iopylons of Kar- 



COLONNADK OF HOUKilHliB, FKOM A I'HOTOGUAPH BY BKUGSCH-BEY. 

nak ; while a few whitewashed huts and a little crowd of 
masts now coming into sight a mile or so higher up, mark 
the position of Luxor. Then up capers Egendi with Lis 
never-failing ''Luxor — kharuf — all right !" to fetch down 
the tar and darabukkeh. The captain claps his hands. A 
circle is formed on the lower deck. The men, all smiles, 
strike up their liveliest chorus, and so, with barbaric music 
and well-filled sails, and flags flying, and green boughs wav- 
ing overhead, we make our triumphal entry into Luxor. 

The top of another pylon ; the slender peak of an obelisk ; 
a colonnade of giant pillars half-buried in the soil ; the 
white houses of the English, American, and Prussian Con- 
suls, each with its flagstaff and ensign ; a steep slope of 



136 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

sandy shore ; a background of mud walls and pigeon-towers ; 
a foreground of native boats and gaily-painted dahabeeyahs 
lying at anchor — such, as we sweep by, is our first pano- 
ramic view of this famous village. A group of turbaned offi- 
cials sitting in the shade of an arched doorway rise and 
salute us as we pass. The assembled dahabeeyahs dozing 
with folded sails, like sea-birds asleep, are roused to spas- 
modic activity. Flags are lowered; guns are fired ; all Luxor 
is startled from its midday siesta. Then, before the smoke 
has had time to clear off, up comes the Bagstones in gallant 
form ; whereupon the dahabeeyahs blaze away again as 
before. 

And now there is a rush of donkeys and donkey-boys, beg- 
gars, guides, and antiquity-dealers, to the shore — the chil- 
dren screaming for bakhshish; the dealers exhibiting strings 
of imitation scarabs ; the donkey-boys vociferating the names 
and praises of their beasts ; all alike regarding us as their 
lawful prey. 

" Hi, lady ! Yankee-Doodle donkey ; try Yankee-Doodle ! " 
cries one. 

" Ear-away Moses ! " yells another. " Go()d donkey — fast 
donkey — best donkey in Luxor !" 

'•' This Prince of Wales's donkey ! " shouts a third, hauling 
forward a decrepit little weak-kneed, moth-eaten looking 
animal, about as good to ride on as a towel-horse. "First- 
rate donkey ! splendid donkey ! God save the Queen ! 
Hurrah ! " 

But neither donkeys nor scarabs are of any importance in 
our eyes just now, compared with the letters we hope to find 
awaiting us on shore. No sooner, therefore, are the boats 
made fast than we are all off, some to the British Consulate 
and some to the Poste Restante, froni both of which we re- 
turn rich and happy. 

Meanwhile we proposed to spend only twenty-four hours 
in Luxor. We were to ride round Karnak this first after- 
noon ; to cross to Medinet Habu and the Ramesseuui^ to- 
morrow mornijig ; and to sail again as soon after midday as 
possible. We hope thus to get a general idea of the topog- 
raphy of Tliebes, and to carry away a superficial impression 
of the architectural style of the Pharaohs. It would be but 

1 This famous building- is supposed by some to be identical both with the 
Memnonium of Strabo and the Tomb of Osymandias as described by Dio- 
dorus Siculus. Champollion, liowever, foUowins; the sense of the hiero- 
glyphed legends, in which it is styled "The House of Rameses" (the 
Sf-cond), has given to it the more appropriate name of the Ramesseum. 



THEBES ANU KAU^fAK. 137 

a glimpse ; yet that glimpse was essential. For Thebes rep- 
resents the great central period of Egyptian art. The earlier 
styles lead up to that point ; the later depart from it ; and 
neither the earlier nor the later are intelligible without it. At 
the same time, however, travellers bound for the Second Cat- 
aract do well to put off everything like a detailed study of 
Thebes till the time of coming back. For the present, a 
rapid survey of the three principal groups of ruins is enough. 
It supplies the necessary link. It helps one to a right under- 
standing of Edfu, of Philae, of Abu Simbel. In a word, it 
enables one to put things in their right places ; and this, after 
all, is a mental process which every traveller must perform 
for himself. 

Thebes, 1 need scarcely say, was built like London on both 
sides of the river. Its original extent must have been very 
great •, but its public buildings, its quays, its thousands of 
[)rivate dwellings, are gone and have left few traces. The sec- 
ular city, which was built oH crude brick, is represented by a 
lew insigniticaut mounds; while of the sacred edifices, hve 
large groups of limestone ruins — three on the western bank 
and two on the eastern, together with the remains of several 
small temples and avast multitude of tombs — are all tliat 
remain in permanent evidence of its ancient splendour. Luxor 
is a modern Arab village occupying the site of one of the old- 
est of these five ruins. It stands on the eastern bank, close 
against the river, about two miles south of Karnak and nearly 
opposite the famous sitting Colossi of the Western plain. 
On the opposite bank lie Gournah, the Kamesseum, and 
Medinet Habu. A glance at the map will do more than 
pages of explanation to show tlie relative position of these 
nuns. The temple of Gournah. it will be seen, is almost vis- 
a-vis of Karnak. The ilamesseum faces about half-way be- 
tween Karnak and Luxor. Medinet Habu is ])laced fartlier to 
the south than any building on the eastern side of the river. 
Behind these three western grou})s, reaching far and wide 
along the edge of the Libyan range, lies the great Theban 
Necropolis; while farther back still, in the radiating valleys 
on the other side of the mountains, are found the Tombs of 
the Kings. The distance between Karnak and Luxor is a 
little less than two miles; while from jVEedinet Habu to the 
Temple of Gournah may be roughly guessed at something 
under four. We have here, therefore, some indication of the 
extent, though not of the limits, of the ancient city. 

Luxor is a large village inhabited by a mixed population of 



138 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Copts and Arabs, and doing a smart trade in antiquities. 
The temple has here formed the nucleus of the village, the 
older part of which has grown up in and about the ruins. The 
grand entrance faces north, looking down towards Karnak. 
The twin towers of the great propylon, dilapidated as they 
are, stripped of their cornices, encumbered with debris, are 
magnificent still. In front of them, one on each side of the 
central gateway, sit two helmeted colossi, battered, and fea- 
tureless, and buried to the chin, like two of the Proud in the 
doleful Fifth Circle. A few yards in front of these again 
stands a solitary obelisk, also half-buried. The colossi are of 
black granite ; the obelisk is of red, highly 2:»olislied, and cov- 
ered on all four sides with superb hieroglyphs in three verti- 
cal columns. These hieroglyphs are engraved with the 
precision of the finest gem. They are cut to a depth of about 
two inches in the outer columns, and five inches m the central 
column of the inscription. The true height of tliis wonder- 
ful monolith is over seventy feet, between thirty and forty 
of which are hid under the accumulated soil of many centu- 
ries. Its companion obelisk, already scaling away by im- 
perceptible degrees under the skyey influences of an alien 
climate, looks down with melancholy indifference upon the 
petty revolutions and counter-revolutions of the Place de la 
Concorde. On a line with the two black colossi, but some 
fifty feet or so farther west, rises a third and somewhat 
smaller head of chert or limestone, the fellow to which is 
doubtless hidden among the huts that encroach half-way 
across the face of the eastern tower. The whole outer sur- 
face of these towers is covered witli elaborate sculptures of 
gods and men, horses and chariots, the pageantry of triumph 
and the carnage of war. The King in his chariot draws his 
terrible bow, or slays his enemies on foot, or sits enthroned, 
receiving the homage of his court. Whole regiments armed 
with lance and shield march across the scene. The foe flies 
in disorder. The King, attended by his fan-bearers, returns 
in state, and the priests burn incense before him. 

This king is Rameses the Second, called Sesostris and 
Osymandias by ancient writers, and best known to history 
as Rameses the Great. His actual names and titles as they 
stand upon the monuments are Ra-user-ma Sotp-en-Ra Ra- 
messu Mer-Amen ; that is to say, " Ra strong in Truth, Ap- 
proved of Ra, son of Ra, Beloved of Amen." 

The battle-scenes here represented relate to that memora- 
ble campaign against the Kheta which forms the subject of 



THEBES AND KAENAK. 



139 




140 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the famous Third Sallier Papyrus/ and is commemorated 
upon the walls of almost every temple built by this mon- 
arch. Separated from his army and surrounded by the 
enemy, the King, attended only by his chariot-driver, is said to 
have six times charged the foe — to have hewn them down 
with his sword of might — to have trampled them like straw 
beneath his horse's feet — to liave dispersed them single- 
handed, like a god. Two thousand five hundred chariots 
were there, and he overthrew them ; one hundred thousand 
warriors, and he scattered them. Those that lie slew not 
with his hand, he chased unto the water's edge, causing them 
to leap to destruction as leaps the crocodile. Such was the 
immortal feat of Rameses, and such the chronicle written by 
the Royal Scribe, Pentaur. 

Setting aside the strain of Homeric exaggeration which 
runs through this narrative, there can be no doubt that it 
records some brilliant deed of arms actually performed by 
tlie King within sight, though uot within reach, of his army ; 
and the hieroglyphic texts interspersed among these tableaux, 
state that the events depicted took place on the fifth day of 
tlie month Epiphi, in the fifth year of his reign. By this we 
must understand the fifth year of his sole reign, which would 
be five years after the death of his father, Seti I, with whom 
he had, from an early age, been associated on the throne. 
He was a man in the prime of life at the time of this famous 
engagement, which was fought under the walls of Kadesh 
on the Orontes ; and the bas-relief sculptures show him to 
have been accompanied by several of his sons, who, though 
evidently very young, are represented in their war-chariots 
fully armed and taking part in the battle.^ 

The mutilated colossi are portrait statues of the conqueror. 
The obelisk, in the pompous style of Egyptian dedications, 
proclaims that "The Lord of the World, Guardian-Sun of 
Truth, approved of Ra, has built this edifice in honour of his 
Father Amen-Ra, and has erected to him these two great 
obelisks of stone in face of the house of Rameses in the City 
of Amnion." 

1 Translated into French by the late Vicomte de Rouge under the title 
of Le Poeme de Pentaour, 1856; into English by Mr. Goodwin, 1858; and 
again by Professor Lushington in 1874. See Records of the Past, vol. ii. 

2 According to the great inscription of Abydos translated by Professor 
Maspero, Rameses II would seem to have been in some sense King from 
his birth, as if the throne of Egypt came to him through his mother, and 
as if his father, Seti I, had reigned for him during his infancy as King- 
Regent. Some inscriptions, indeed, show him to have received homage 
even before his birth. 



THEBES AND KAliNAK. 1-11 

So stately was the approach made by Rameses the Great 
to the temple founded about a hundred and lifty years before 
his time by Amenhotep III. He also built the courtyard 
upon which this pylon opened, joining it to the older part of 
the building in such wise that the original first court became 
now the second court, while next in order came the portico, 
the hall of assembly, and the sanctuary. By and by, when 
the long line of Kameses had passed away, other and later 
kings put their liands to the work. The names of Shabaka 
(Sabaco), of Ptolemy Philopater, and of Alexander the 
Younger, appear among the later inscriptions ; while those 
of Amenhotep IV (Khu-en-Aten), Horemheb, and Seti, the 
father of Rameses the Great, are found in the earlier parts 
of the building. It was in this way that an Egyptian tem- 
ple grew fioni age to age, owing a colonnade to this king 
and a pylon to that, till it came in time to represent thti 
styles of many periods. Hence, too, that frequent irregu- 
larity of plan, which, unless it could be ascribed to the ca- 
prices of successive builders, would form so unaccountable 
a feature in Egyptian architecture. In the present instance, 
the pylon and courtyard of Rameses II are set at an angle 
of five degrees to the courtyard and sanctuary of Amenho- 
tep III. This has evidently been done to bring the Temple 
of Luxor into a line with the Temple of Karnak, in order 
that the two might be connected by means of that stupen- 
dous avenue of sphinxes, the scattered remains of which yet 
strew the course of the ancient roadway. 

As I have already said, these half-buried pylons, this sol- 
itary obelisk, those giant heads rising in ghastly resurrection 
before the gates of the Temple, were magnificent still. But 
it was as the magnificence of a splendid prologue to a poem 
of which only garbled fragments remain. Beyond that en- 
trance lay a smoky, filthy, intricate labyrinth of lanes and 
passages. Mud hovels, mud pigeon-towers, mud yards, and 
a mud mosque, clustered like wasps' nests in and about the 
ruins. Architraves sculptured with royal titles supported 
the roofs of squalid cabins. Stately capitals peeped out 
from the midst of sheds in which buffaloes, camels, donkeys, 
dogs, and human beings were seen herding together in un- 
savoury fellowship. Cocks crew, hens cackled, pigeons 
cooed, turkeys gobbled, children swarmed, women were bak- 
ing and gossiping, and all the sordid routine of Arab life 
was going on, amid winding alleys that masked the colon- 
nades and defaced the inscriptions of the Pharaohs. To 



142 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

trace the plan of this part of the buikling was then impos- 
sible. 

All communication being cut off between the courts and 
the portico, we had to go round outside and through a 
door at the farther end of the Temple, in order to reach 
the sanctuary and the adjoining chambers. The Arab who 
kept the key provided an incli or two of candle. For it was 
veiy dark in there ; the roof being still perfect, with a largC;, 
rambling, modern house built on the top of it —so that if 
this part of the Temple was ever partially lighted, as at 
Denderah and elsewhere, by small wedge-like openings in 
the roof, even those faint gleams were excluded. 

The sanctuary which was rebuilt in the reign of Alex- 
ander .^gus ; some small side chambers ; and a large hall, 
which was perhaps the hall of assembly, were all that re- 
mained under cover of the original roofing-stones. Some 
half-buried and broken columns on the side next the river 
showed, however, that this end was formerly surrounded by 
a colonnade. Tiie sanctuary — an oblong granite chamber 
with its own separate roof — stands enclosed in a larger 
hall, like a box within a box, and is covered inside and out- 
side with bas-reliefs. These sculptures (among which I 
observed a kneeling figure of the king, offering a kneeling 
image to Amen Ka) are executed in the mediocre style of 
the Ptolemies. That is to say, tlie forms are more natural 
but less refined than those of the Pharaonic period. The 
iimbs are fleshy, the joints large, the features insignificant. 
Of actual portraiture one cannot detect a trace ; while every 
face wears the same objectionable smirk which disfigures the 
Cleopatra of Denderah. 

In the large hall, which I have called the Hall of Assem- 
bly, one is carried back to the time of the founder. Between 
Amenhotep III and Alexander ^gus there lies a great gulf 
of 1200 years; and their styles are as widely separated as 
their reigns. The merest novice could not possibly mistake 
the one for the other. ISTothing is of course, more common 
than to find Egyptian and Graeco-Egyptian work side by side 
in the same temple ; but nowhere are the distinctive char- 
acteristics of each brought into stronger contrast than in 
these dark chambers of Luxor. In the sculptures that line 
the hall of Amenhotep we find the pure lines, the severe and 
slender forms, the characteristic heads, of a period when the 
art, having as yet neither gained nor lost by. foreign influ- 
ences, was entirely Egyptian. The subjects relate chiefly to 



THEBES AND KARNAK. 143 

the infancy of the King; but it is difficult to see anytliing 
pi'operly by the liglit of a candle tied to the end of a stick ; 
and here, where the bas-relief is so low and the walls are so 
high, it is almost impossible to distinguish the details of the 
upper tableaux. 

I could make out, however, that Amen, Maut, and their 
son Khonsu, the three personages of the Thebau triad, are 
tlie presiding deities of these scenes; and that they are in 
some way identified with the fortunes of Thothmes IV, his 
queen, and their son, Amenhotep 111. Amenhotep is born, 
apparently, under the especial protection of Maut, the Divine 
Mother; brought up with the youthful god Khonsu; and re- 
ceived by Amen as the brother and equal of his own divine 
son. I think it was in this hall that 1 observed a singular 
group representing Amen and Maut in an attitude symboli- 
cal perhaps of tioth-plight or marriage. They sit face to 
face, the goddess holding in her right hand the left hand of 
the god, while in her left hand she supports his right elbow. 
Their thrones, meanwhile, rest on the heads, and their feet 
are upheld on the hands of two female genii. It is signifi- 
cant that Ranieses III and one of the ladies of his so-called 
hareem are depicted in the same attitude in one of the 
famous domestic subjects sculptured on the upper stories of 
the Pavilion at Medinet Habu. 

We saw this interesting Temple much too cursorily ; yet 
we gave more time to it than the majority of those who 
year after year anchor for days together close under its ma- 
jestic columns. If the whole building could be transported 
bodily to some point between Meiuphis and Siilt where tlie 
river is bare of ruins, it would be enthusiastically visited. 
Here it is eclipsed by the wonders of Karnak and the 
western bank, and is undeservedly neglected. Tliose parts 
of the original building which 3- et remain are, indeed, pecul- 
iarly precious; for Amenhotep, or Amunopli, the Third, was 
one of the great builder-kings of Egypt, and we have here 
one of the few extant specimens of his architectural work.^ 

1 The rains of the Great Temple of Luxor have undergone a complete 
transformation smce the above description was written ; Professor Maspero, 
during the two last years of his official rule as successor to the late Mariette- 
Pasha, having done for this magnificent relic of Pharaonic times what his 
predecessor did for the more recent Temple of Edfoo. The difficulties of 
carrying out this great rmdertaking were so great as to appear at fii"St sight 
almost msurmomitable. The fellaheen refused at fii-stto sell their houses; 
Mustapha Aga asked the exorbitant price of £3^0 for his Consular resi- 
dence, built as it was between the columns of Horemheb facing the river; 
and for no pecuniaiy consideration whatever was it possible to purchase the 



144 ONE THOUSAND MILES TIP THE NILE. 

The Coptic quarter of Lnxor lies north of the great pylon, 
and partly skirts the river. It is cleajier, wider, i>iore airy 
than tl:iat of the Arabs. The Prussian Consul is a Copt ; the 
polite postmaster is a Copt; and in a modest lodging built 
half beside and half over the Coptic church, lives the Coptic 
Bishop. The postn)aster (an ungainly youth in a European 
suit so many sizes too small that his arms and legs appeared 
to be sprouting out at the ends of his garments) was profuse 
in his offers of service. He undertook to forward letters to 
us at Assuan. Kjrosko, and Wady Halfah, where post-otiices 
liad lately b;'en established. And he kept his promise, I am 
bound to say, with perfect punctuality; — always adding 
some queer little complimentary message on the outer wrap- 
per, such as "I hope you well my compliments;" or '-'Wishes 
you good news pleasant voyage." As a specimen of his liter- 
ary style I copied the following notice, of which it was evi- 
dent that he was justly proud : — 

"Notice: On the eommandation. We have ordered the 
])Ost stations in lower Egypt from Assiut to Cartoom. Be- 
longing to the Post Kedevy Egy))tian in a good order. Now 
to pay for letters in lower Egypt, is as in upper Egypt twice. 
Cleans that the letters which goes from here far than Asiut ; 
must pay for it two piastres per ten grs. Also that which 

li^lit of pulling down the mosque in the first gi-eat courtyard of the Temple, 
fitter twelve months of negotiation, the fellaheen were at last bought out 
on fair terms, each proprietor receiving a stated price for his dwelling and 
a piece of land elsewhere, upon which to build another. Some thirty fam- 
ilies were thus got rid of, about eight or ten only refusing to leave at any 
price. The work of demolition was begun in 1885. In 188(>, the few fami- 
lies yet lingering in the ruins followed the example of the rest ; and in the 
cours'e of that season the Temple was cleared from end to end, only the 
little native mosque being left standing within the precincts, and Mustapha 
Aga's house on the side next the landing-place. Professor Maspero's resig- 
nation followed in 1887, since when the work has been carried on by his 
successor, M. Grebaut, with the result that in place of a crowded, sordid, 
nniutelligible labyrinth of mud-huts, yards, stables, alleys, and dung-heaps, 
a noble Temple, second only to that of Karnak for grandeur of design and 
beauty of proportion, now marshals its avenues of columns and uplifts its 
scnlfitured architraves along the crest of the ridge which here rises high above 
the eastern bank of the Nile. Some of those columns, now that they are 
cleared do^vn to the level of the original pavement, measure 57 feet in the 
shaft; and in the gi-eat courtyard built by Rameses II, which measures 190 
feet by 170, a series of beautiful colossal statues of that Pharaoh in highly 
polished red gi-anite have been discovered, some yet standing in &>f.v, hav- 
ing been built into the walls of mud structures and iml^edded (for who shall 
say how many centuries?) in a sepulchre of ignoble clay. Last of all, Mus- 
tapha Aga, the kindly and popular old British Consul, whose hospitality 
will long be remembered by English travellers, died about twelve months 
since, and the house in which he entertained so many English visitors, and 
upon which he set so high a value, is even now in course of demolition. 



THEBES AND KABNAK. 145 

goes far than Cartoom. The letters which goes between 
Asiut and Cartoom ; must pay only one piastre per ten grs. 
This and that is, to buy stamps from the Post and put it 
upon the letter. Also if somebody wishes to send letters in- 
suranced, must two piastres more for any letter. There is 
orderation in the Post to receive the letters which goes to 
Europe, America and Asia, as England France, Italy Germau}'^, 
Syria, Constantinople etc. Also to send newspapers patterns 
and other things. Luxor the 1st January 1874. U Ispettore, 
iAL Adda." 

This young man begged for a little stationery and a 
penknife at parting. We had, of course, much pleasure in 
presenting him with such a modest testimonial. We after- 
wards learned that he levied the same little tribute on every 
dahabeeyah that came up the river; so I conclude that he 
must by this time have quite an interesting collection of 
small cutlery. 

From the point where the railroad ends, the Egyptian and 
Nubian mails are carried by runners stationed at distances of 
four miles all along the route. Each man runs his four 
miles, and at the end thereof finds the next man ready to 
snatch up his bag and start off at full speed immediately. 
The next man transfers it in like manner to the next ; and 
so it goes by day and night without a break, till it reaches 
the first railway station. Each runner is supposed to do his 
four miles in half-an-hour, and the mail Avhich goes out every 
morning from Luxor reaches Cairo in six days. Considering 
that Cairo was 450 miles away, that 268 miles of this dis- 
tance had to be done on foot, and that the trains went only 
once a day, Ave thought this a very creditable speed. 

In the afternoon we took donkeys, and rode out to Karnak. 
Our way lay through the bazaar, which Avas the poorest we 
had yet seen. It consisted of only a few open sheds, in one 
of which, seated on a mud-built divan, cross-legged and tur- 
banless like a row of tumbler mandarins, we saw five of our 
sailors under the hands of the Luxor barber. He had just lath- 
ered all five heads, and was complacently surveying the effect 
of his Avork, much as an artistic cook might survey a dish of 
particularly successful 7neringues a la creme. The meringues 
looked very sheepish Avhen Ave laughed and passed by. 

Next came the straggling suburb Avhere the dancing girls 
most do congregate. These damsels, in gaudy garments 
of emerald green, bright rose, and flaming yellow, Avere 



146 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

squatting outside their cabins or lounging unveiled about the 
thresholds of two or three dismal dens of cafes in the mar- 
ket-place. They showed their teeth, and laughed familiarly 
in our faces. Their eyebrows were painted to meet on the 
bridge of the nose ; their eyes were blackened round with 
kohl; their cheeks were extravagantly rouged; their hair 
was gummed, and greased, and festooned upon their fore- 
heads, and plaited all over in innumerable tails. Never 
before had we seen anything in female form so hideous. 
One of these houris was black ; and she looked quite beauti- 
ful in her blackness, compared with the painting and plaster- 
ing of her companions. 

We now left the village behind, and rode out across a wide 
plain, barren and hillocky in some parts ; overgrown in 
others with coarse halfeh grass ; and dotted here and there 
with clumps of palms. The Nile lay low and out of sight, 
so that the valley seemed to stretch away uninterruptedly to 
the mountains on both sides. Now leaving to the left a 
Sheykh's tomb, topped by a little cupola and shaded by 
a group of tamarisks ; now following the bed of a dry water- 
course ; now skirting shapeless mounds that indicated the 
site of ruins unexplored, the road, uneven but direct, led 
straight to Karnak. At every rise in the ground we saAV the 
liuge propylons towering higher above the palms. Once, but 
for only a few moments, there came into sight a confused and 
wide-spread mass of ruins, as extensive, apparently, as the 
ruins of a large town. Then our way dipped into a sandy 
groove bordered by mud-walls and plantations of dwarf- 
palms. All at once this groove widened, became a stately 
avenue guarded by a double file of shattered sphinxes, and 
led towards a lofty pylon standing up alone against the sky. 

Close beside this grand gatewa}^, as if growing there on 
purpose, rose a thicket of sycamores and palms ; while be- 
yond it were seen the twin pylons of a Temple. The sphinxes 
were colossal, and measured about ten feet in length. One 
or two were ram-headed. Of the rest — some forty or fifty 
in number — all were headless, some split asunder, some 
overturned, others so mutilated that they looked like torrent- 
worn boulders. This avenue once reached from Luxor to 
Karnak. Taking into account the distance (which is just 
two miles from Temple to Temple) and the short intervals 
at which the sphinxes are placed, there cannot originally 
have been fewer than five hundred of them; that is to say 
two hundred and fifty on each side of the road. 



THEBES AND KARNAK. U7 

Dismounting for a few minutes, we went into the Temple ; 
glanced round the open courtyard with its colonnade of 
pillars ; peeped hurriedly into some ruinous side-chambers ; 
and then rode on. Our books told us that we had seen the 
small Temple of Rameses the Third. It would have been 
called large anywhere but at Karnak. 

I seem to remember the rest as if it had all happened in 
a dream. Leaving the small Temple, we turned towards the 
river, skirted the mud-walls of the native village, and 
approached the Great Temple by way of its main entrance. 
Here we entered upon what had once been another great 
avenue of sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep 
cut Avith hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some 
grand landing-place beside the Nile. 

And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed by 
in the morning rose straight before us, magnificent in ruin, 
glittering to the sun, and relieved in creamy light against 
blue depths of sky. One was nearly perfect ; the other, 
shattered as if by the shock of an earthquake, was still so 
lofty that an Arab clambering from block to block midway 
of its vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel. 

On the threshold of this tremendous portal we again dis- 
mounted. Shapeless crude-brick mounds, marking the limits 
of the ancient wall of circuit, reached far away on either 
side. An immense perspective of pillars and pylons leading 
up to a very distant obelisk opened out before us. We 
went in, the great walls towering up like cliffs above our 
heads, and entered the First Court. Here, in the midst of a 
large quadrangle open to the sky, stands a solitary column, 
the last of a central avenue of twelve, some of which, dis- 
jointed by the shock, lie just as they fell, like skeletons of 
vertebrate monsters left stranded by the Plood. 

Crossing this Court in the glowing sunlight, we came to a 
mighty doorway between two more propylons — the doorway 
splendid with coloured bas-reliefs ; the propylons mere cata- 
racts of fallen blocks piled up to right and left in grand con- 
fusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone. Only a jutting 
fragment of the lintel stone remains. That stone, when 
perfect, measured forty feet and ten inches across. The 
doorway must have been full a hundred feet in height. 

We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus 
engraven on arm and breast with the cartouche of Ramesas 
II, we crossed the shade upon the threshold, and passed into 
the famous Hypostyle Hall of Seti the First. 



148 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

It is a place that lias been much written about and often 
painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey 
more than a dwarfed and pallid impression. To describe it, 
in the sense of building up a recognisable image by means 
of words, is impossible. The scale is too vast ; the effect 
too tremendous ; the sense of one's own dumbness, and little- 
ness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing. It is a 
place that strikes you into silence ; that empties you, as it 
were, not only of words but of ideas. Nor is this a first 
effect only. Later in the year, Avhen we came back down 
the river and moored close by, and spent long days among 
the ruins, I found I never had a word to say in the Great 
Hall. Others might measure the girth of those tremendous 
columns ; others might climb hither and thither, and find out 
points of view, and test the accuracy of Wilkinson aiid 
Mariette ; but I could only look, and be silent. 

Yet to look is something, if one can but succeed in remem- 
bering ; and the G-reat Hall of Karnak is photographed in 
some dark corner of my brain for as long as I have memory. 
I shut my eyes, and see it as if I were there- — not all at 
once, as in a picture ; but bit by bit, as the eye takes note of 
large objects and travels over an extended field of vision. 
I stand once more among those miglity columns, which radiate 
into avenues from whatever point one takes them. I see 
them swathed in coiled shadows and broad bands of light. 
I see them sculptured and painted with shapes of Gods and 
Kings, with blazonings of royal names, with sacrificial altars, 
and forms of sacred beasts, and emblems of wisdom and 
truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. I stand 
at the foot of one — or of what seems to be the foot; for 
the original pavement lies buried seven feet below. Six 
men standing with extended arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, 
could barely span it round. It casts a shadow twelve feet 
in breadth — such a shadow as might be cast by a tower. 
The capital that juts out so high above my head looks as if 
it might have been placed there to support the heavens. It 
is carved in the semblance of a full-blown lotus, and glows 
Avith undying colours — colours that are still fresh, though 
laid on by hands that have been dust these three thousand 
years and more. It would take not six men, but a dozen to 
measure round the curved lip of that stupendous lily. 

Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one hun- 
dred and twenty-two in number) are gigantic too ; but smaller. 
Of the roof they once supported, only the beams remain. 



THEBES ANJJ KARNAK. 



U9 



Those beams are stones — huge monoliths ^ carved and 
painted, bridging the space from pillar to pillar, and pattern- 
ing the trodden soil with bands of shadow. 




HYPOSTVLE H.VLI,, KAKNAK. 

Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the 
one_ end aflame-like obelisk; at the other, a solitary palm 
against a background of glowing mountain. To right, to 

1 The size of these stones not heing given in any of our books, I paced 
the length of one of the shadows, and (allowing for so much more at each 
end as would be needed to reach to the centres of the two capitals on which 
It rested) foimd the block above must mensure at least 25 feet iu length 



150 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

left, showing transversely through long files of columns, we 
catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining the roofless walls 
in every direction. The King, as usual, figures in every 
group, and performs the customary acts of worship. The 
Gods receive and approve him. Half in light, half in shadow, 
these slender, fantastic forms stand out sharp, and clear, and 
colourless; each figure some eighteen or twenty feet in 
height. They could scarcely have looked more weird when 
the great roof was in its place and perpetual twilight reigned. 
But it is difficult to imagine the roof on, and the sky shut 
out. It all looks right as it is; and one feels, somehow, 
that such columns should have nothing between them and 
the infinite blue depths of heaven. 

The great central avenue was, however, sufficiently lighted 
by means of a double row of clerestory windows, some of 
which are yet standing. Certain writers have suggested that 
they may have been glazed; but this seems improbable for 
two reasons. Firstly, because one or two of these huge 
window-frames yet contain the solid stone gratings which in 
the present instance seem to have done duty for a translucent 
material : and, secondly, because we have no evidence to show 
that the early Egyptians, though familiar since the days of 
Cheops with the use of the blow-pipe, ever made glass in 
sheets, or introduced it in this way into their buildings. 

How often has it been written, and how often must it be 
repeated, that the Great Hall at Karnak is the noblest archi- 
tectural work ever designed and executed by human hands ? 
One writer tells us that it covers four times the area occu- 
pied by the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Another 
measures it against St. Peter's. All admit their inability to 
describe it; yet all attempt the description. To convey a 
concrete image of the place to one who has not seen it, is, 
however, as I have already said, impossible. If it could be 
likened to this place or that, the task would not be so diffi- 
cult ; but there is, in truth, no building in the wide world to 
compare with it. The Pyramids are more stupendous. The 
Colosseum covers more ground. The Parthenon is naore 
beautiful. Yet in nobility of conception, in vastness of 

The measurements of the Great Hall are, in plain figures, 170 feet in length 
by 329 in breadth. It contains 134 columns, of which the central twelve 
stand 62 feet high in the shaft (or about 70 with the plinth and abacus), 
and measure 34 feet 6 inches in circumference. The smaller columns stand 
42 feet 5 inches in the shaft, and measure 28 feet in circumference. All 
are buried to a depth of between six or seven feet in the alluvial deposits 
of between three and four thousand annual iniuidations. 



THEBES AND KAENAK. 151 

detail, in majesty of the highest order, the Hall of Pillars 
exceeds them every one. This doorway, these columns, are 
the wonder of the world. How was that lintel-stone raised ? 
How were these capitals lifted ? Entering among those 
mighty pillars, says a recent observer, "you feel that you 
liave slirunk to the dimensions and feebleness of a fly." 
But 1 think you feel more than that. You are stupefied by 
the thought of the mighty men who made them. You say 
to yourself : — " There were indeed giants in those days." 

It may be that the traveller who finds liimself for the first 
time in the midst of a grove of IVellingtonia tjigantea feels 
something of the same overwhelming sense of awe and won- 
der ; but the great trees, though they have taken three thou- 
sand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery that 
comes of human labour. They do not strike their roots 
through six thousand years of history. They have not been 
Avatered with the blood and tears of millions.^ Their leaves 
know no sounds less musical than the singing of bii'ds, or 
the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over the high- 
lands of Calaveros. But every breath that wanders down 
the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the sighs 
of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and under 
the chariot-wheels of the conqueror. 

The Hypostyle Hall, though built by Seti, the father of 
Rameses 11, is supposed by some Egyptologists to have been 
planned, if not begun, by that same Amenhotep III who 
founded the Temple of Luxor and set up the famous Colossi 
of the Plain. However this may be, the cartouches so 
lavishly sculptured on pillar and architrave contain no names 
but those of Seti, who undoubtedly executed the work en 
bloc, and of Barneses, who completed it. 

And now, would it not be strange if we knew the name 
and history of the architect who superintended the building 
of this wondrous Hall, and planned the huge doorway by 
which it was entered, and the mighty pylons which lie shat- 
tered on either side ? Would it not be interesting to look 
upon his portrait, and see what manner of man he was ? 
Well, the Egyptian room in the Glyptothek Museum at 
Munich contains a statue found some seventy years ago at 
Thebes, which almost certainly represents that man, and is 
inscribed with his history. His name was Bak-en-Khonsu 
(servant of Khonsu). He sits upon the ground, bearded and 

1 It has been calculated that every stone of these huge Pharaonic tem- 
ples cost at least one hiiman life. 



152 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

robed, in an attitude of meditation. That he was a man of 
unusual ability is shown by the inscriptions engraved upon 
the back of tlie statue. These inscriptions record his promo- 
tion step by step to the highest grade of the hierarchy. Hav- 
ing attained the dignity of High Priest and First Prophet 
of Amen during the reign of Seti the First, he becanre 
Cliief Architect of the Thebaid under Rameses IT, and re- 
ceived a royal commission to superintend the embellishment 
of the Temples. When E-ameses II '•' erected a monument 
to his Divine Father Amen Ka," the building thereof was 
executed under the direction of Bak-en-Khonsu. Here the 
inscription, as translated by M. Deveria, goes on to say that 
'•'lie made the sacred edifice in the upper gate of the Abode 
of Amen.^ He erected obelisks of granite. He made golden 
flagstaffs. He added very, very great colonnades." 

M. Deveria suggests that the Temple of Gournah may here 
be indicated ; but to this it might be objected that Gournah 
is situated in the lower and not the upper part of Tliebes ; 
that at Gournah there are no great colonnades and no obe- 
lisks ; and that, moreover, for some reason at present un- 
known to us, the erection of obelisks seems to have been 
almost wholly confined to the eastern bank of the Nile. It 
is, however, possible that the works here enumerated may 
not all have been executed for one and the same Temple. 
The " sacred edifice in the upper gate of the Abode of Amen " 
might be the Temple of Luxor, Avhich Rameses did in fact 
adorn with the only obelisks we know to be his in Thebes ; 
the monument erected by him to his Divine Father Amen 
(evidently a new structure) would scarcely be any other than 
the Ramesseum ; while the " very, very great colonnades," 
which are expressly specified as additions, would seem as if 
they could only belong to tlie Hypostyle Hall of Karnak. 
The question is at all events interesting ; and it is pleasant 
to believe that in the Munich statue we have not only a por- 
trait of one who at Karnak played the part of Michael Angelo 
to some foregone and forgotten Bramante, but who was also 
the letinus of the Ramesseum. For the Ramesseum is the 
Parthenon of Thebes. 

The sun was sinking and the shadows were lengthening 
when, having made the round of the principal ruins, we at 

1 i.e. Per Amen, or Pa- Amen; — one of the ancient names of Thebes, 
which was the city especially dedicated to Amen. Also Apt, or Ahot, or 
Apeton, by some ascribed to an Indo-Germanic root signifying Abode. 
Another name for Thebes, and probably the one most in us?, was Uas. 



THEBES AND KAliNAK. 153 

length mounted our donkeys and turned towards Luxor. To 
describe all that we saw after leaving the Great Hall would 
fill a chapter. Huge obelisks of shining granite — some yet 
erect, some shattered and prostrate ; vast lengths of scnlp- 
tured walls covered with wondrous battle subjects, sacerdotal 
processions, and elaborate chronicles of the deeds of Kings ; 
ruined court-yards surrounded by tiles of headless statues ; 
a sanctuary built all of polished granite, and engraven 
like a gem ; a second Hall of Pillars dating back to the early 
days of Thothmes the Third ; labyrinths of roofless cham- 
bers ; mutilated colossi, shattered pylons, fallen columns, 
unintelligible foundations and hieroglyphic inscriptions with- 
out end, were glanced at, passed by, and succeeded by fresh 
wonders. I dare not say how many small outlying temples 
"we saw in the course of that rapid survey. In one place we 
came upon an undulating tract of coarse halfeh grass, in the 
midst of which, battered, defaced, forlorn, sat a weird com- 
pany of green granite Sphinxes and lioness-headed Basts. In 
another, we saw a magniticent colossal hawk upright on his 
pedestal in the midst of a bergfall of ruins. More avenues of 
Sphinxes, more pylons, more colossi were passed before the 
road we took in returning brought us round to that by which 
we had come. By the time we reacked the Seeykh's tomb, 
it was nearly dusk. We rode back across the plain, silent 
and bewildered. Have I not said that it was like a dream ? 



154 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THEBES TO ASSUAN. 

HuKRYiNG close upoii tlie serenest of Egyptian sunsets 
came a night of storms. The wind got up about ten. By 
midnight the river was racing in great waves, and our daha- 
beeyah rolling at her moorings like a ship at sea. The sand, 
driving in furious gusts from the Libyan desert, dashed like 
hail against our cabin windows. Every moment we were 
either bumping against the bank, or being rammed by our 
own felucca. At length, a little before dawn, a huge slice of 
the bank gave way, thundering like an avalanche upon our 
decks ; whereupon Eeis Hassan, being alarmed for the safety 
of the boat, hauled us up to a little sheltered nook a few 
hundred yards higher. Taking it altogether, we had not 
had such a lively night since leaving Benisouef. 

The look-out next morning was dismal — the river run- 
ning high in yeasty waves ; the boats all huddled together 
under the shore ; the western bank hidden in clouds of sand. 
To get under way was impossible, for the wind was dead 
against us ; and to go anywhere by land was equally out of 
the question. Karnak in a sand-storm would have been 
grand to see ; but one would have needed a diving helmet 
to preserve eyes and ears from destruction. 

Towards aiternoon, the fury of the wind so far subsided 
that we were able to cross the river and ride to Medinet 
Habu and the Ramesseum. As we achieved only a passing 
glimpse of these wonderful ruins, I will for the present say 
nothing about them. We came to know them so well here- 
after that no mere first impression would be worth record. 

A light but fitful breeze helped us on next day as far as 
Erment, the Ptolenuiic Hernionthis, once the site of a goodly 
temple, now of an important sugar-factory. Here we moored 
for the night, and after dinner received a visit of ceremony 
from the Bey — a tall, slender, sharp-featured, bright-eyed 
man in European dress, remarkably dignified and well-bred 
— who came attended by his secretary, Kawass, and pipe- 




Statue df Sesdstris -Thebes. 



THEBES TO AS8UAN. 155 

bearer. Now the Bey of Erment is a great personage in 
these parts. He is governor of the town as well as superin- 
tendent of the sugar-factory ; holds a military command ; has 
his palace and gardens close by, and his private steamer on 
the river; and is, like most high officials in Egypt, a Turk of 
distinction. The secretary, wlio was the Bey's younger 
brother, wore a brown Inverness cape over a long white pet- 
ticoat, and left his slippers at the saloon door. He sat all 
the time with his toes curiously doubled under, so that his 
feet looked like clenched fists in stockings. Both gentlemen 
wore tarbooshes, and carried visiting canes. The visiting 
cane, by the way, plays a conspicuous part in modern Egyp- 
tian life. It measures about two and a half feet in length, 
is tipped at both ends with gold or silver, and is supposed to 
add the last touch of elegance to the bearer. 

We entertained our guests with coffee and lemonade, and, 
as well affwe could, wifeh conversation. The Bey, who spoke 
only Turkish and Arabic, gave a flourishing account of the 
sugar-works, and despatched his pipe-bearer for a bundle of 
fresh canes and some specimens of raw and candied sugars. 
He said he had an English foreman and several English work- 
men, and that for the English as a nation he had the highest 
ac. miration and regard ; but that the Arabs " had no heads." 
To our inquiries about the ruins, his replies were sufficiently 
discouraging. Of the large Temple every vestige had long 
since disappeared ; while of the smaller one only a few col- 
umns and part of the walls were yet standing. They lay out 
beyond the town and a long way from the river. There was 
very little to see. It was all " sagheer " (small) ; " moosh- 
taib " (bad) ; not worth the trouble of the walk. As for " an- 
teekahs," they were rarely found here, and when found were 
of slight value. 

A scarab which he wore in a ring was then passed round 
and admired. It fell to our Little Lady's turn to examine it 
last, and restore it to the owner. But the owner, with a bow 
and a deprecating gesture, would have none of it. The ring 
was a toy — a nothing — the lady's — his no longer. She 
was obliged to accept it, however unwillingly. To decline 
would have been to offend. But it was the way in which the 
thing was done that made the charm of this little incident. 
The grace, the readiness, the courtesy, the lofty indifference 
of it, were alike admirable. Macready in his best days could 
have done it with as princely an air ; but even he would prob- 
ably have missed something of the Oriental reticence of the 
Bey of Erment. 



156 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

He then invited vis to go over the sugar-factory (which we 
declined on account of the hiteness of the hour), and pres- 
ently took liis leave. About ten minutes after, came a whole 
posse of presents — three large bouquets of roses for the 
Sittat (ladies), two scarabei, a small funereal statuette in the 
rare green porcelain, and a live turkey. We in return sent a 
complicated English knife with all sorts of blades, and some 
pots of English jam. 

The wind rose next morning with the sun, and by break- 
fast-time we had left Erment far behind. All that day the 
good breeze served us well. The river was alive with cargo- 
boats. The Philae put on her best speed. The little Bag- 
stones kept up gallantly. And the Fostat, a large iron daha- 
beeyah full of English gentlemen, kept us close company all 
the afternoon. We were all alike bound for Esneh, which 
is a large trading town, and lies twenty-six miles south of 
Erment, 

Now, at Esneh the men were to bake again. Great, there- 
fore was Reis Hassan's anxiety to get in first, secure the 
oven, and buy the flour before dusk. The Reis of the FtJS- 
tat and he of the Bagstones were equally anxious, and for 
the same reasons. Our men, meanwhile, were wild with 
excitement, watching every manoeuvre of the other boats ; 
hanging on to the shoghool like a swarm of bees ; and obey- 
ing the word of command with unwonted alacrity. As we 
neared the goal, the race grew hotter. The honour of the 
boats was at stake, and the bread question was for the mo- 
nient forgotten. Finally all three dahabeeyahs ran in abreast, 
and moored side by side in front of a row of little open cafes 
just outside the town. 

Esneh (of which the old Egyptian civil name was Sni, and 
the Roman name Latopolis) stands high upon the mounds of 
the ancient city. It is a large place — as large, apparently, . 
as Minieh, and like Minieli, it is the capital of a province. 
Here dragomans lay in provision of limes, charcoal, flour, 
and live stock, for tlie Nubian journey; and crews bake for 
the last time before their return to Egypt. For in Nubia 
food is scarce, and prices are high, and there are no public 
ovens. 

It w^as about five o'clock on a market-day when we reached 
Esneh, and the market was not yet over. Going up through 
the usual labyrinth of windowless mud-alleys where the old 
men crouched, smoking, under every bit of sunny wall, and 
the children swarmed like flies, and the cry for bakhshish 



THEBES TO ASSUAN. 157 

buzzed incessantly about our ears, we came to an open space 
in the upper part of the town, and found ourselves all at 
once iu the midst of the market. Here were peasant folk 
selling farm-produce ; stall-keepers displaying combs, look- 
ing-glasses, gaudy printed handkerchiefs and cheap bracelets 
of bone and coloured glass ; camels lying at ease and snarling 
at every passer-by ; patient donkeys ; ownerless dogs ; veiled 
women; blue and black robed men; and all the common 
sights and sounds of a native market. Here, too, we found 
Reis Hassan bargaining for flour ; Talhamy haggling with a 
charcoal-dealer; and the M. B.'s buying turkeys and geese 
for themselves and a huge store of tobacco for their crew. 
Most welcome sight of all, however, was a dingy chemist's 
shop about the size of a sentry-box, over the door of which 
was suspended an Arabic inscription; while inside, robed all 
in black, sat a lean and grizzled Arab, from wlu)m we bought 
a big bottle of rose water to make eye-lotion for L.'s ophthal- 
mic patients. 

Meanwhile there was a Temple to be seen at Esneh ; and 
this Temple, as we had been told, was to be found close 
against the market-place. We looked round in vain, how- 
ever, for any sign of pylon or portico. The chemist said it 
was " kureiyib," which means " near by." A camel-driver 
pointed to a dilapidated wooden gateway iu a recess between 
two neighbouring houses. A small boy volunteered to lead 
the way. ^Ve were greatly puzzled. We had expected to see 
the Temple towering above the siirronuding houses, a.s at 
Luxor, and could by no means understand how any l;irg(^ 
building to wliieh tliat gateway might give access, should not 
bo visible from without. 

The boy, however, ran and thumped upon the gate, and 
sliouted "Abbas! Abbas!" Meheiuet Ali, who was doing 
escort, added some thundering blows with his staff, and a 
little crowd gathered, but no Abbas came. 

The bystanders, as usual, were liberal with their advice; 
recommending the boy to elimV) over, and the sailor to knock 
louder, and suggesting that Abbas the absent might possibly 
be found in a certain neighbouring cafe. At length I some- 
Vv-liat impatiently expressed my opinion that tliere was " Ma- 
feesh Birbeh " (no Temple at all) ; whereupon a dozen voices 
were raised to assure me that the Birbeh was no myth — 
that it was " kebir " (big) — that it was '^kwy-ees" (beauti- 
ful) — and that all the " Ingleez " came to see it. 

In the midst of the clamour, however, and just as we are 



158 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

about to turn away in despair, the gate creaks open; the 
gentlemen of the Fostat troop out in puggeries and knicker- 
bockers ; and we are at last admitted. 

This is what we see — a little yard surrounded by mud- 
walls ; at the farther end of the yard a dilapidated doorway ; 
beyond the doorway, a strange-looking, stupendous mass 
of yellow limestone masonry, long, and low, and level, and 
enormously massive. A few steps farther, and this proves 
to be the curved cornice of a mighty Temple — a Temple 
neither ruined nor defaced, but buried to the chin in the ac- 
cumulated rubbish of a score of centuries. This part is 
evidently the portico. We stand close under a row of huge 
capitals. The columns that support them are buried beneath 
our feet. The ponderous cornice juts out above our heads. 
From the level on which we stand to the top of that cornice 
may measure about twenty-five feet. A high mud-wall runs 
parallel to the whole width of the fa9ade, leaving a passage 
of about twelve feet in breadth between the two. A low 
mud-parapet and a hand-rail reach from capital to capi- 
tal. All beyond is vague, carvernous, mysterious — a great 
shadowy gulf, in the midst of which dim ghosts of many 
columns are darkly visible. From an opening between two 
of the capitals, a flight of brick steps leads down into a vast 
hall so far l)elow the surface of the outer world, so gloomy, 
so awful, that it might be the portico of Hades. 

Going down these steps we come to the original level of 
the Temple. We tread the ancient pavement. We look tij) 
to the massive ceiling, recessed, and sculptured, and painted, 
like the ceiling at Denderah. We could almost believe, in- 
deed, that we are again standing in the i)ortico of Denderah. 
The number of columns is the same. The arrangement of 
the intercolumnar screen is the same. The general effect 
and tlie main features of the plan are the same. In some 
respe(;ts, however, Esneh is even more striking. The col- 
umns, though less massive than those of Denderah, are more 
elegant, and look loftier. Their shafts are covered with 
figures of gods, and emblems, and lines of hieroglyphed in- 
scription, all cut in low relief. Their capitals, in place of 
the huge draped Hathor-heads of Denderah, are studied from 
natural forms — from the lotus-lily, the papyrus-blossom, 
the plumy date-palm. The wall-sculpture, however, is in- 
ferior to that at Denderah, and immeasurably inferior to the 
AV all-sculpture at Karnak. The figures are of the meanest 
Ptolemaic type, and all of one size. The inscriptions, in- 



THEBES TO ASS U AN. 



159 




160 ONK THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

stead of being grouped wherever there happened to be space, 
and so producing the richest form of wall-decoration ever 
devised by man, are disposed in symmetrical columns, the 
effect of wlii(!h, when compared with the florid style of 
Karnak, is as the methodical neatness of an engrossed deed 
to the splendid freedom of an illuminated manuscript. 

The steps occupy the place of the great doorway. Tlie 
jambs and part of the cornice, the intercolumnar screen, the 
shafts of the columns under whose capitals we came in, ni-^ 
all there, half-projecting from, and half-imbedded in the solid 
mound beyond. The light, however, comes in from so high 
up, and through so narrow a space, that one's eyes need 
to become accustomed to the darkness before any of these 
details can be distinguished. Then, by degrees, forms of 
deities familiar and unfamiliar emerge from the gloom. 

The Temple is dedicated to Knuni or Kneph, the Soul 
of the World, whom we now see for the first time. He is 
ram-headed, and holds in his hand the "'ankh," or emblem of 
life.^ Another new acquaintance is Bes,^ the grotesque god 
of mirth and jollity. 

Two singular little erections, built in between the columns 
to right and left of the steps, next attract our attention. 
They are like stone sentry-boxes. Each is in itself complete, 
with roof, sculptured cornice, doorway, and, if I remember 
rightly, a small square window in the side. The inscrip- 
tions upon two similar structures in the portico at Edfu show 
that the right-hand closet contained the sacred books belong- 
ing to the Temple, while in the closet to the left of the main 
entrance the King underwent the ceremony of purification. 

1 Knum was one of the primordial Gods of the Egyptian cosmogony ; 
th§ divine potter; lie who fashioned man from the clay, and breathed into 
him the breath of life. He is sometimes represented in the act of fashion- 
ing the first man, or that mysterious egg from which not only man but the 
universe proceeded, by means of the ordinary potter's wheel. Sometimes 
also he is depicted, in his boat, moving upon the face of the waters at the 
dawn of creation. About the time of the XXth dynasty Knum became 
identified with Ra. He also was identified with Amen, and was wor- 
shipped in the Great Oasis in the Greek period as Amen-Knum. He is like- 
wise known as "The Soul of the Gods," and in this character, as well as 
in his Solar character, he is represented with the head of a ram, or in the 
form of a ram. Another of his titles is " The Maker of Gods and' Men." 
Knum was also one of the Gods of the Cataract, and chief of the Triad 
worshipped at Elephantine. An inscription at Philae styles him " Maker 
of all that is. Creator of all beings. First existent, the Father of Fathers, 
the Mother of Mothers." 

2 Bes. " La culte de Bes parait etre une importation Asiatique. Quel- 
quefois le dieu est arme d'une epee qu'il brandit au-dessus de sa tete ; dans 
ce role, il semble le dieu des combats. Plus souvent c'est le dieu de la 
danse, de la musique, des plaisirs." — Mariette Beij. 



THEBES TO ASS VAX. 161 

It may therefore be taken for granted that these at Esneh 
were erected for the same purposes. 

And now we look round for the next Hall — and look in 
vain. The doorway which should lead to it is walled up. 
The portico was excavated by Moliannned Ali in 1842 ; not 
in any spirit of antiquarian zeal, but in order to provide a 
safe underground magazine for gunpowder. Up to that time, 
as may be seen by one of tlie illustrations to Wilkinson's 
Thebes and General View of Egypt, the interior was choked 
to within a few feet of the capitals of the columns, and 
used as a cotton-store. Of the rest of the building, nothing 
is known ; nothing is visible. It is as large, probably, as 
Denderah or Edfu, and in as perfect preservation. So, at 
least, says local tradition ; but not even local tradition can 
point to what extent it underlies the foundations of the 
modern houses that swarm about its roof. An inscription 
first observed by Champollion states that the sanctuary was 
built by Thothmes III. Is that antique sanctuary still there ? 
Has the Temple grown step by step under the hands of suc- 
cessive Kings, as at Luxor ? Or has it been re-edified ab 
ovo, as at Denderah ? These are "puzzling questions," only 
to be resolved by the demolition of a quarter of the town. 
Meanwhile, what treasures of sculptured history, what pic- 
tured chambers, what buried bronzes and statues may here 
wait the pick of the excavator ! 

All next day, while the men were baking, the Writer sat 
in a corner of the outer passage, and sketclied the portico of 
the Temple. The sun rose upon tlie one horizon and set 
upon the other before that drawing was finished ; yet for 
scarcely more tlian one hour did it light up the front of the 
Temple. At about half-past nine a.m. it first caught the stone 
fillet at the angle. Then, one by one, each massy capital 
became outlined with a thin streak of gold. As this streak 
widened, the cornice took fire, and])resently the whole stood 
out in light against the sky. Slowly then, but quite percep- 
tibly, the sun travelled across the narrow space overhead ; the 
shadows became vertical; the light changed sides ; and by 
ten o'clock there was shade for the remainder of the da}'. 
Towards noon, however, the sun being then at its highest 
and the air transfused with light, the inner columns, swal- 
lowed up till now in darkness, became illumined with a won- 
derful reflected light, and glowed from out the gloom like 
pillars of fire. 

Never to go on shore without an escort is one of the rules 



162 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

of Nile life, andSalame has by this time become my exclusive 
property. He is a native of Assuan, young, active, intelli- 
gent, full of fun, hot-tempered withal, and as thorough a 
gentleman as I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. For 
a sample of his good breeding, take this day at Esneh — a day 
Avhieh he might have idled away in the bazaars and cafes, and 
which it must have been dull work to spend cooped up be- 
tween a mud-wall and an outlandish Birbeh, built by the 
Djinns who reigned before Adam. Yet Salame betrays no 
discontent. Curled up in a shady corner, he watches me like 
a dog ; is ready with an umbrella as soon as the sun comes 
round; and replenishes a water-bottle or holds a colour-box 
as deftly as though he had been to the manner born. At one 
o'clock arrives my luncheon, enshrined in a pagoda of plates. 
Being too busy to leave off work, however, I put the pagoda 
aside, and despatch Salame to the market, to buy himself 
some dinner ; for which purpose, wishing to do the thing 
handsomely, I present him with the magnificent sum of two 
silver piastres, or about fivepence English. With this he 
contrives to purchase three or four cakes of flabby native 
bread, a black-looking rissole of chopped meat and vegetables, 
and about a pint of dried dates. 

Knowing this to be a better dinner than my friend gets 
every day, knowing also that our sailors habitually eat at 
noon, I am surprised to see him leave these dainties untasted. 
In vain I say " Bismillah " (in the name of God) ; pressing 
him to eat in vocabulary phrases eked out with expressive 
pantomime. He laughs, shakes his head, and, asking per- 
mission to smoke a cigarette, protests he is not hungry. Thus 
three more hours go by. Accustomed to long fasting and 
absorbed in my sketch, I forget all about the pagoda ; and it 
is past four o'clock when I at length set to work to repair 
tissue at the briefest possible cost of time and daylight. And 
now the faithful Salame falls to with an energy that causes 
the cakes, the rissole, the dates, to vanish as if by magic. Of 
what remains from my luncheon he also disposes in a trice. 
Never, unless in a pantomime, have I seen mortal man dis- 
play so prodigious an appetite. 

I made Talhamy scold him, by and by, for this piece of 
voluntary starvation . 

" By my Prophet ! " said he, " am I a pig or a dog, that I 
should eat when the Sitt was fasting ? " 

It was at Esneh, by the way, tiiat that hitherto undis- 
covered curiosit}^, an ancient Egyptian coin, was offered to 



THEBES TO ASSUAN. 163 

me for sale. The finder was digging for nitre, and turned it 
up at an immense depth below the mounds on the outskirts 
of the town. He volunteered to show the precise spot, and 
told his artless tale with childlike simplicity. Unfortunately, 
however, for the authenticity of this remarkable relic, it bore, 
together with the familiar profile of George IV, a superscrip- 
tion of its modest value, which was precisely one farthing. 
Un another occasion, when we were making our long stay at 
Luxor, a coloured glass button of honest Birmingham make 
was brought to the boat by a fellah who swore that he had 
himself found it upon a mummy in the Tombs of the Queens 
at Karnet Murraee. The same man came to my tent one day 
when I was sketching, bringing with him a string of more 
than doubtful scarabs — all veritable " anteekahs," of course, 
and all backed up with undeniable pedigrees. 

"La, la (no, no), — bring me no more anteekahs," I said, 
gravely. " They are old and worn out, and cost much money. 
Have you no imitation scarabs, new and serviceable, that 
one might wear without the fear of breaking them ? " 

" These are imitations, Sitt ! " was the ready answer. 

"But you told me a moment ago they were genuine an- 
teekahs." 

" That was because I thought the Sitt wanted to buy an- 
teekahs," he said, quite shamelessly. 

"See now," I said, "if you are capable of selling me new 
things for old, how can I be sure that you would not sell me 
old things for new ? " 

To this he replied by declaring that he had made the 
scarabs himself. Then, fearing I should not believe him, he 
pulled a scrap of coarse paper frojn his bosom, borroAved one 
of my pencils, and drew an asp, an ibis, and some other com- 
mon hieroglyphic forms, with tolerable dexterity, 

"Now you believe ?" he asked, triumphantly. 

" I see that you can make birds and snakes," I replied ; 
" but that neither proves that you can cut scarabs, nor that 
these scarabs are new." 

"Nay, Sitt," he protested, "I made them with these hands. 
I made them but the other day. By Allah ! they cannot be 
newer." 

Here Talhamy interposed. 

"In that case," he said, "they are too new, and will crack 
before a month is over. The Sitt would do better to buy 
some that are wgU seasoned." 

Our honest Fellah touched his brow and breast. 



164 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

'• Xow in strict truth, Dragoman I " he said, witli an air 
of the most engaging candour, " these scarabs were made at 
the time of the inundation. They are new ; but uot too new. 
They are thoroughly seasoned. If they crack, you shall 
denounce me to the governor, and I will eat stick for them ! " 

Now it has always seemed to me that the most curious 
feature in this little scene was tiie extraordinary simplicity 
of the Arab. With all his cunning, with all his disposition 
to cheat, he suffered himself to be turned inside-out as un- 
suspiciously as a baby. It never occurred to him that his 
untrutlifulness was being put to the test, or that he was com- 
mitting himself more and more deeply with every word he 
uttered. The fact is, however, that the Fellah is half a sav- 
age. Notwithstanding his mendacit}' — (and it must be 
owned that he is the most brilliant liar under lieaven) — he 
remains a singularly transparent piece of humanity, easily 
amused, easily deceived, easily angered, easily pacitied. He 
steals a little, cheats a little, lies a great deal ; but on the 
other hand he is patient, hospitable, affectionate, trustful. 
He suspects no malice, and bears none. He commits no great 
crimes. He is incapable of revenge. In short, his good 
points outnumber his bad ones ; and what man or nation 
need hope for a much better character ? 

To generalise in this way may seem like presumption on 
the part of a passing stranger; yet it is more excusable as 
regards Egypt than it would be of any other equally accessible 
country. In Euro])e. and indeed in most parts of the East, 
one sees too little of the people to be able to form an opinion 
about them ; but it is not so on the Nile. Cut off from hotels, 
from railways, from Europeanised cities, you are brought into 
continual intercourse with natives. The sick who come to 
you for medicines, the country gentlemen and government 
officials who visit you on board your boat and entertain you 
on shore, your guides, your donkey-boys, the very dealers 
who live by cheating you, furnish endless studies of charac- 
ter, and teach you more of Egyptian life than all the books 
of Nile-travel that ever were written. 

Then your crew, part Arab, part Nubian, are a little world 
in themselves. One man was born a slave, and will carry the 
dealer's brand-marks to his grave. Another has two children 
in Miss Whatele3''s school at Cairo. A third is just married, 
and has left his young Avife sick at home. She may be dead 
by the time he gets back, and he will hear no news of her 
meanwhile.. So with them all. Each has his simple story 



THEBES TO ASstlAN. 165 

— a story in which the local oppressor, the dreaded conscrip- 
tion, and the still more dreaded corvee, form the leading inci- 
dents. The poor fellows are ready enough to pour out their 
hopes, their wrongs, their sorrows. Through sympathy with 
these, one comes to know the men ; and through the men, 
the nation. For the life of the Beled repeats itself with but 
little variation wherever the Nile flows and the Khedive 
rules. The characters are the same ; the incidents are the 
same. It is only the niise en scene which varies. 

And thus it comes to pass that the mere traveller who 
spends but half-a-year on the Nile may, if he takes an in- 
terest in Egypt and the Egyptians, learn more of both in 
that short time than would be possible in a country less 
singularly narrowed in all ways — politically, socially, geo- 
graphically. 

And this reminds me that the traveller on the Nile really 
sees the wliole land of Egypt. Going from point to point in 
other countries, one follows a thin line of road, railway, or 
river, leaving wide tracts unexplored on either side ; bub 
there are few places iu Middle or Upper Egypt, and none at 
all in Nubia, where one may not, from any moderate height, 
survey the entire face of the country from desert to desert. 
It is well to do this frequently. It helps one, as nothing 
else can help one, to an understanding of the wonderful 
mountain waste through which the Nile has been scooping 
its way for uncounted cycles. And it enables one to realise 
what a mere slip of alluvial deposit is this famous land which 
is '• the gift of the river.'" 

A dull grey morning, a faint and fitful breeze, carried us 
slowly on our way from Esneh to Edfu. The new bread — a 
heavy boat-load when brought on board — lay in a huge heap 
at the end of the upper deck. It took four men one whole 
day to cut it up. Their incessant gabble drove us nearly 
distracted. 

"Uskiit, Khaleefeh! Uskut, Ali ! " (Silence, Khaleefehl 
Silence, Ali !) Talhamy would say from time to time. " You 
are not on your own deck. The Howadji can neither read 
nor write for the clatter of your tongues." 

And then, for about a minute and a lialf, they would be 
quiet. 

But you could as easily keep a monkey from chattering as 
an Arab. Our men talked incessantly ; and their talk was 
always about money. Listen to them when we might, such 
words as " Khdmsa gurush " (five piastres), " nus rival" 



166 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

(lialf-a-dollav), "ethneen shilling" (two shillings), were per- 
petually coming to the surface. We never could understand 
how it was that money, which played so small a part in their 
lives, should play so large a part in their conversation. 

It was about midday when we passed El Kab, the ancient 
Eileithyias. A rocky valley narrowing inland; a Sheykh's 
tomb on the mountain-ridge above ; a few clumps of date- 
palms ; some remains of what looked like a long crude-brick 
wall running at right angles to the river; and an isolated 
mass of hollowed limestone rock left standing apparently in 
the midst of an exhausted quarry, were all we saw of El Kab 
as the dahabeeyah glided by. 

And now, as the languid afternoon wears on, the propylons 
of Edfu loom out of the misty distance. We have been look- 
ing for them long enough before they come in sight — calcu- 
lating every mile of the way ; every minute of the daylight. 
The breeze, such as it was, has dropped now. The river 
stretches a-way before us, smooth and oily as a pond. Nine 
of the men are tracking. Will they pull us to Edfu in time 
to see the Temple before nightfall ? 

Reis Hassan looks doubtful ; but takes refuge as usual 
in " Inshallah ! " (God willing). Talhamy talks of landing a 
sailor to run forward and order donkeys. Meanwhile the 
Philse creeps lazily on ; the sun declines unseen behind a 
filmy veil ; and those two shadowy towers, rising higher and 
ever higher on the horizon, look grey, and ghostly, and far 
distant still. 

Suddenly the trackers stop, look back, shout to those on 
board, and begin drawing the boat to shore. Reis Hassan 
points joyously to a white streak breaking across the smooth 
surface of the river about half-a-mile behind. The Fostat's 
sailors are already swarming aloft — the Bagstoues' trackers 
are making for home — our own men are preparing to fling 
in the rope and jump on board as the Philae nears the bank. 

For the capricious wind, that always springs up when we 
don't want it, is coming ! 

And now the Fostat, being hindmost, flings out her big 
sail and catches the first puff ; the Bagstoues' turn comes 
next ; the PhilEe shakes her wings free, and shoots ahead ; 
and in fewer minutes than it takes to tell, we are all three 
scudding along before a glorious breeze. 

The great towers that showed so far away half-an-hour 
ago are now close at hand. There are palm-woods about 
their feet, and clustered huts, from the midst of which they 



THEBES TO ASSUAN. 167 

tower up against the invirky sky magnificently. Soon they 
are passed and left behind, and the grey twilight takes them, 
and we see them no more. Then night comes on, cold and 
starless ; yet not too dark for going as fast as wind and can- 
vas will carry ixs. 

•And now, with that irrepressible instinct of rivalry that 
flesh — especially flesh on the Nile — is heir to, we quickly 
turn our good going into a trial of speed. It is no longer a 
mere business-like devotion to the matter in hand. It is 
a contest for glory. It is the Pliilae against the Fostat, and 
the Bagstones against both. In plain English, it is a race. 
The two leading dahabeeyahs are pretty equally matched. 
The Pliilse is larger than the Fostat ; but the Fostat has a 
bigger mainsail. On the other hand, the Fostat is an iron 
boat; whereas the Philee, being wooden-built, is easier to 
pole off a sandbank, and lighter in hand. The Bagstones 
carries a capital mainsail, and can go as fast as either upon 
occasion. Meanwhile, the race is one of perpetually varying 
fortunes. Now the Fostat shoots ahead; now the Philae. 
We pass and re-pass ; take the wind out of one another's 
sails ; economise every curve ; hoist every stitch of canvas ; 
and, having identified ourselves with our boats, are as eager 
to win as if a great prize depended on it. Under these cir- 
cumstances, to dine is difiicult — to go to bed superfluous — 
to sleep impossible. As to mooring for the night, it is not 
to be thought of for a moment. Having begun the contest, 
we can no more help going than the wind can help blowing ; 
and our crew are as keen about winning as ourselves. 

As night advances, the wind continues to rise, and our 
excitement with it. Still the boats chase each other along 
the dark river, scattering spray from their bows and flinging 
out broad foam-tracks behind them. Their cabin-windows, 
all alight within, cast flickering flames upon the waves below. 
The coloured lanterns at their mast-heads, orange, purple, and 
crimson, burn through the dusk like jewels. Presently the 
mist blows off; tlie sky clears ; the stars come out; the wind 
howls ; the casements rattle ; the tiller scroops ; the sailors 
shout, and race, and bang the ropes about overhead ; while 
we, sitting up in our narrow berths, spend half the night 
watching from our respective windows. 

In this way some hours go by. Then, about three in the 
morning, with a shock, a recoil, a yell, and a scuffle, we all 
three rush headlong upon a sandbank ! The men fly to the 
rigging, and furl the flapping sail. Some seize punting poles. 



168 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Others, looking like full-grown imps of darkness, leap over- 
board and set their shoulders to the work. A strophe and 
antistrophe of grunts are kept up between those on deck and 
those in the water. Finally, after some ten minutes' frantic 
struggle, the Philse slips off, leaving the other two aground 
in the middle of the river. 

Towards morning, the noisy night having worn itself 
away, we all fall asleep — only to be roused again by Tal- 
hamy's voice at seven, proclaiming aloud that the Bagstones 
and Fostat are once more close upon our heels ; that Silsilis 
and Kom Ombo are passed and left behind ; that we have 
already put forfcy-six miles between ourselves and Edfu ; and 
that the good wind is still blowing. 

We are now within fifteen miles of Assuan. The Nile is 
narrow here, and the character of the scenery has quite 
changed. Our view is bounded on the Arabian side by a 
near range of black granitic mountains ; while on the Libyan 
side lies a chain of lofty sand-hills, each curiously capped by 
a crown of dark boulders. On both banks the river is thickly 
fringed with palms. 

Meanwhile the race goes on. Last night it was sport; to- 
day it is earnest. Last night we raced for glory ; to-da,y we 
race for a stake. 

" A guinee for Keis Hassan, if we get first to Assuan ! " 

Reis Hassan's eyes glisten. No need to call up the drago- 
man to interpret between us. The look, the tone, are as in- 
telligible to him as the choicest Arabic; and the magical 
word '* guinee " stands for a sovereign now, as it stood for 
one pound one in the days of Nelson and Abercrombie. He 
touches his head and breast ; casts a backward glance at the 
pursuing dahabeeyahs, a forward glance in the direction of 
Assuan ; kicks olf his shoes ; ties a handkerchief about his 
waist ; and stations himself at the top of the steps leading to 
the upper deck. By the light in his eye and the set look 
about his mouth, Re'is Hassan means winning. 

Now to be first in Assuan means to be first on the gover- 
nor's list, and first up the Cataract. And as the passage of 
the Cataract is some two or three days' work, this little ques- 
tion of priority is by no means unimportant. Not for five 
times the promised "guinee" would we have the Fostat slip 
in first, and so be kept waiting our turn on the wrong side 
of the frontier. 

And now, as the sun rises higher, so the race waxes hotter. 
At breakfast time, we were fifteen miles from Assuan. Now 



THEBES TO ASSUAN. 169 

the fifteen miles have gone down to ten ; and when we reach 
yonder headland, they will have dwindled to seven. It is 
plain to see, however, that as the distance decreases between 
ourselves and Assuan, so also it decreases between ourselves 
and the Fostat. Reis Hassan knows it. I see him meas- 
uring the space by his eye. I see the frown settling on his 
brow. He is calculating how much the Fostat gains in 
every quarter of an hour, and how many quarters we are yet 
distant from the goal. For no Arab sailor counts by miles. 
He counts by time, and by the reaches in the river; and 
these may be taken at a rough average of three miles each. 
When, therefore, our captain, in reply to an oft-repeated 
question, says we have yet two bends to make, we know that 
we are about six miles from our destination. 

Six miles — and the Fostat creeping closer every minute ! 
Just now we were all talking eagerly ; but as the end draws 
near, even the sailors are silent. Ke'is Hassan stands motion- 
less at his post, on the look-out for shallows. The words 
" Shamal — Yemiu " (left — right), delivered in a short, sharp 
tone, are the only sounds he utters. The steersman, all eye 
and ear, obeys him like liis hand. The sailors squat in their 
places, quiet and alert as cats. 

And now it is no longer six miles but five — no longer five, 
but four. The Fostat, thanks to her bigger sail, has well- 
nigh overtaken us ; and the Bagstones is not more than a 
hundred yards behind the Fostat. On we go, however, past 
palm-woods of nobler growth than any we have yet seen ; past 
forlorn homeward-bound dahabeeyahs lying-to against the 
wind ; past native boats, and river-side huts, and clouds of 
driving sand; till the corner is turned, and the last reach 
gained, and the minarets of Assuan are seen as through a 
shifting fog in the distance. The ruined tower crowning yon- 
der promontory stands over against the town ; and those black 
specks midway in the bed of the river are the first outlying 
rocks of the Cataract. The channel there is hemmed in be- 
:ween reefs and sandbanks, and to steer it is difiicult in even 
the calmest weather. Still our canvas strains to the wind, 
and the Pliilse rushes on full-tilt, like a racer at the hurdles. 

Every eye now is turned upon Re'is Hassan ; and Reis 
Hassan stands rigid, like a man of stone. The rocks are 
close ahead — so close that we can see the breakers pouring 
over them, and the swirling eddies between. Our way lies 
through an opening between the boulders. Beyond that 
openings the channel turns off sharply to the left. It is a 



170 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

point at Avhich everything will depend on the shifting of the 
sail. If done too soon, we miss the mark ; if too late, we 
strike upon the rocks. 

Suddenly our Captain flings up his hand, takes the stairs 
at a bound, and flies to tlie prow. The sailors spring to their 
feet, gathering some round the shoghool, and soine round the 
end of the yard. The Fostat is up beside us. The moment 
for winning or losing is come. 

And now, for a couple of breathless seconds, the two daha- 
beeyahs plunge onward side by side, making for that narrow 
passage which is only wide enough for one. Then the iron 
boat, shaving the sandbank to get a wider berth, shifts her 
sail first, and shifts it clumsily, breaking or letting go her 
shoghool. We see the sail flap, and the rope fly, and all 
hands rushing to retrieve it. 



NATIVE BOAT, ASSUAN. 

In that moment Reis Hassan gives the word. The Philas 
bounds forward — takes the channel from under the very 
bows of the Fostat — changes her sail without a hitch — and 
dips right away down the deep water, leaving her rival hard 
and fast among the shallows. 

The rest of the way is short and open. In less than five 
minutes we have taken in our sail, paid Reiis Hassan his 
well-earned guinec, and found a snug corner to moor ir. 
And so ends our memorable race of nearly sixty-eight miles 
from Edfu to Assuan. 



ASS U AN AND ELEPHANTINE. 171 



CHAPTER X. 

ASS1&AN AND ELEPHANTINE. 

The green island of Elepliantine, which is about a mile 
in length, lies opposite Assuan and divides tlie Nile in two 
channels. The Libyan and Arabian deserts — smooth amber 
sand-slopes on the one hand; rugged granite cliffs on tlie 
other — come down to the brink on either side. On the 
Libyan shore a Skeykh's tomb, on the Arabian shore a bold 
fragment of Moorish architecture with ruined arches open to 
the sky, crown two opposing heights, and keep " watch over 
the gate of the Cataract. Just under the Moorish ruin, and 
separated from the river by a slip of sandy beach, lies 
Assuan. 

A few scattered houses, a line of blank wall, the top of a 
minaret, the dark mouths of one or two gloomy alleys, are all 
that one sees of the town from the mooring-place below. The 
black boulders close against the shore, some of which are 
superbly hieroglyphed, glisten in the sun like polished jet.i 
The beach is crowded with bales of goods ; with camels laden 
and unladen; with turbaned figures coming and going; with 
damaged cargo-boats lying up high and dry, and half heeled 
over, in the sun. Others, moored close together, are trdcing 
in or discharging cargo. A little apart from these lie some 
three or four dahabeeyahs flying English, American, and Bel- 
gian flags. Another has cast anchor over the way at Ele- 
phantine. Small row-boats cross and recross, meanwhile, 
from shore to shore ; dogs bark ; camels snort and snarl ; 
donkeys bray; and clamorous curiosity-dealers scream, chat- 
ter, hold their goods at arm's length, battle and implore to 

1 " At the Cataracts of the great rivers Orinoco, Nile, and Congo, the sye- 
nitic rocks are coated by a black substance, appearing as if they had been 
polished with plumbago. The layer is of extreme thinness ; and on analy- 
S:s by Bei-zelius it was found to consist of the oxides of manganese of iroii. 
. . . The origin, however, of these coatings of metallic oxides, which 
seem as if cemented to the rocks, is not understood; and no reason, I be- 
lieve, can be assigned for their thickness remaining the same." — Jcurnai 
0/ Researches, by Charles DarwiUj chap. i. p. 12, ed. 1845. 



172 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

come on board, and are only kept off tlie landing plank by- 
means of two big sticks in the hands of two stalwart sailors. 

The things offered for sale at Assuan are altogether new 
and strange. Here are no scarabaei, no funerary statuettes, 
no bronze or porcelain gods, no relics of a past civilisation ; 
but, on the contrary, such objects as speak only of a rude and 
barbarous present — ostrich eggs and feathers, silver trinkets 
of rough Nubian workmanship, spears, bows, arrows, bucklers 
of rhinoceros-hide, ivor^'^ bracelets cut solid from the tusk, 
porcupine quills, baskets of stained and plaited reeds, gold 
nose-rings, and the like. One old woman has a Nubian lady's 
dressing-case for sale — an uncouth. Fetish-like object with a 
cushion for its body, and a top-knot of black feathers. The 
cushion contains two Kohl- bottles, a bodkin, and a bone 
comb. 

But the noisiest dealer of the lot is an impish boy blessed 
with the blackest skin and the shrillest voice ever brought 
together in one human being. His simple costume consists 
of a tattered shirt and a white cotton skull-cap ; his stock-in- 
trade, of a greasy leather fringe tied to the end of a stick. 
Flying from window to window of the saloon on the side 
next the shore, scrambling up the bows of a neighbouring 
cargo-boat so as to attack us in the rear, thrusting his stick 
and fringe in our faces whichever way we turn, and pursuing 
us with eager cries of '• Madame Nubia ! Madame Nubia ! " 
he skips, and screams, and grins like an ubiquitous goblin, 
and throws every competitor into the shade. 

Having seen a similar fringe in the collection of a friend 
at home, I at once recognised in " Madame Nubia '' one of 
those cui'ious girdles which, with the addition of a necklace 
and a few bracelets, form the entire wardrobe of little girls 
south of the Cataract. The}'' vaiy in size according to the 
age of the wearer; the largest being about twelve inches in 
depth and twenty-five in length. A few are ornamented with 
beads and small shells ; but these are parures de luxe. The 
ordinary article is cheaply and unpretentiously trimmed with 
castor-oil. That is to say, the girdle when new is well soaked 
in the oil, which softens and darkens the leather, besides add- 
ing a perfume dear to native nostrils. 

For to the Nubian, who grows his ow)i plants and bruises 
his own berries, this odour is delicious. He reckons castor- 
oil among his greatest luxuries. He eats it as we eat butter. 
His wives saturate their plaited looks in it. His little girls 
perfume their fringes with it. His boys anoint their bodies 







^T.aS'^JAK 



ASSLFAN AND ELEPHANTINE. 173 

with it. His home, his breath, his garments, his food, are 
redolent of it. It pervades the very air in which he lives 
and has his being, Happy the European traveller who, 
while his lines are cast in Nubia, can train his degenerate 
nose to delight in the aroma of castor-oil! 

The march of civilisation is driving these fringes out of 
fashion on the frontier. At Assuan, they are chiefly in de- 
mand among English and American visitors. Most people 
purchase a " Madame Nubia" for the entertainment of friends 
at home. L., who is given to vanities in the way of dress, 
bought one so steeped in fragrance that it scented the Philae 
for the rest of the voyage, and retains its odour to this day. 

Almost before the mooring-rope was made fast, our Fainter, 
arrayed in a gorgeous keffiy eh ^ and armed with the indis- 
pensable visiting-cane, had sprung ashore and hastened to 
call upon the Governor. A couple of hours later the Gover- 
nor (having promised to send at once for the Sheykli of the 
Cataract and to forward our going by all means in his power) 
returned the visit. He brought with him the Mudir^ and 
Kadi^ of Assuan, each attended by his pipe-bearer. 

We received our guests with due ceremony in the saloon. 
The great men placed themselves on one of the side-divans, 
and the Painter opened the conversation by offering them 
champagne, claret, port, sherry, curayoa, brandy, whisky, and 
Angostura bitters. Talhamy interpreted. 

The Governor laughed. He was a tall young man, grace- 
ful, lively, good-looking, and black as a crow. The Kadi and 
Mudir, both elderly Arabs, yellow, wrinkled, and precise, 
looked shocked at the mere mention of these unholy liquors. 
Somebody then proposed lemonade. 

The Governor turned briskly towards the speaker. 

" Gazzoso ? " he said interrogatively. 

To which Talhamy replied : " Aiwah (Yes) Gazzoso." 

Aerated lemonade and cigars were then brought. The 
Governor watched the process of uncorking with a face of 
profound interest, and drank with the undisguised greediness 
of a schoolboy. Even the Kadi and Mudir relaxed some- 
what of the gravity of their demeanour. To men whose 
habitual drink consists of lime-water and sugar, bottled 
lemonade represents champagne mousseux of the choicest 
brand. 

^ Kfijfiyeh: A square hoail-shawl, made of silk or woollen. European 
travellers wear them as puggarees. 

2 Mudir : Chief Magistrate. ^ Kadi : Judge. 



174 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Then began the usual attempts at conversation; and only 
those who have tried small-talk by proxy know how hard it 
is to supply topics, suppress yawns, and keep up an animated 
expression of countenance, while the civilities on both sides 
are being interpreted by a dragoman. 

We began, of course, with the temperature ; for in Egypt, 
where it never rains and the sun is always shining, the 
theromometer takes the place of the weather as a useful 
platitude. Knowing that Assuan enjoys the hottest reputa- 
tion of any town on the surface of the globe, we were agree- 
ably surprised to lind it no warmer than England in Sep- 
tember. The Governor accounted for this by saying that he 
had never known so cold a winter. We then asked the usual 
questions about the crops, the height of the river, and so 
forth ; to all of which he replied with the ease and bonhomie 
of a man of the world. Nubia, he said, was healthy — the 
date-harvest had been abundant — the corn promised well — 
the Soudan was quiet and prosperous. Referring to the new 
postal arrangements, he congratulated us on being able to 
receive and post letters at the Second Cataract. He also 
remarked that the telegraphic wires were now in working 
order as far as Khai-tum. We then asked how soon he ex- 
pected the railroad to reach Assuan ; to which he replied — 
" In two years, at latest." 

At length our little stock of topics came to an end, and the 
entertaiiiment flagged. 

" What shall I say next ? " asked the dragoman. 

"Tell him we particularly wish to see the slave-market." 

The smile vanished from the Governor's face. The Mudir 
set down a glass of fizzing lemonade, untasted. The Kadi 
all but dropped his cigar. If a shell had burst in the saloon. 
their consternation could scarcely have been greater. 

The Governor, looking very grave, was the first to speak. 

" He says there is no slave-trade in Egypt, and no slave- 
market in Assuan," interpreted Talhamy. 

Now we had been told in Cairo, on excellent authority, that 
slaves were still boaght and sold here, though less publicly 
than of old ; and that of all the sights a traveller might see 
in Egypt, this was the most curious and pathetic. 

" No slave-market ! " we repeated incredulously. 

The Governor, the Kadi, and the Mudir shook their heads, 
and lifted up their voices, and said all together, like a trio of 
Mandarins in a comic opera: — 

" La. la, la ! Mafeesh bazaar — mafeesh bazaar ! " (No, no, 
no ! No bazaar — no bazaar !) 



ASSUAN AND ELEPHANTINE. 175 

We endeavoured to explain that in making this inquiry 
we desired neither the gratitication of an idle curiosit}', nor 
the furtherance of any political views. Our only object was 
sketching. Understanding, therefore, that a private bazaar 
still existed in Assilan . . . 

This was too much for the judicial susceptibilities of the 
Kadi. He would not let Talhamy finisli. 

"There is nothing of the kind," he interrupted, puckering 
his face into an expression of such virtuous horror as might 
become a reformed New Zealander on the subject of canni- 
balism. "It is unlawful — unlawful.'"' 

An awful silence followed. We felt we had committed an 
enormous blunder, and were disconcerted accordingly. 

The Governor saw, and with the best grace in the world 
took pity upon, our embarrassment. He rose, opened the 
piano, and asked for some music ; whereupon the Little Lady 
played the liveliest thing she could remember, which hap- 
pened to be a waltz by Verdi. 

The Governor, meanwhile, sat beside the piano, smiling and 
attentive. With, all his politeness, however, he seemed to be 
looking for something — to be not altogether satisfied. There 
was even a shade of disappointment in the tone of his "Ket- 
therkhayrik ketir," when the waltz finally exploded in a 
shower of arpeggios. What could it be ? Was it that he 
wished for a song ? Or would a pathetic air have pleased 
liim better ? 

Not a bit of it. He was looking for what his quick eye 
presently detected — namely some printed music, which he 
seized triumphantly and placed before the player. What he 
wanted was "music played from a book." 

Being asked whether he preferred a lively or a plaintive 
u elody, lie replied that "he did not care, so long as it was 
<! fficultr 

Now it chanced that he had pitched upon a volume of 
AVagner ; so the Little Lady took him at his word, and gave 
him a dose of " Tannhauser." Strange to say, he was de- 
lighted. He showed his teeth ; he rolled his eyes ; he 
uttered the long-drawn "Ah!" which in Egypt signifies 
applause. The more crabbed, the more far-fetched, the 
more unintelligible the moveinent, the better, apparently, he 
liked it. 

I never think of Assuan but I remember that curious scene 
— our Little Lady at the piano; the black Governor grin- 
ning in ecstasies close by ; the Kadi in his magnificent shawl- 



176 ONE THOUSAND MILES TIP THE NILE. 

turban ; the Mudir half asleep ; the air thick with tobacco- 
smoke ; and above all — dominant, tyrannous, overpowering 
— the crash and clang, the involved harmonies, and the 
multitudinous combinations of Tannhauser. 

The linked sweetness of an Oriental visit is generally 
draM'n out to a length that sorely tries the patience and 
politeness of European hosts. A native gentleman, if he has 
any business to attend to, gets through his work before noon, 
and has nothing to do but smoke, ciiat, and doze away the 
remainder of the day. For time, which liangs heavily on 
his hands, he has absolutely no value. His main object in 
life is to consume it, if possible, less tediously. He pays a 
visit, therefore, with the deliberate intention of staying as 
long as possible. Our guests on the present occasion re- 
mained the best part of two hours ; and the Governor, who 
talked of going to England shortly, asked for all our names 
and addresses, that he might come and see us at home. 

Leaving tlie cabin, he paused to look at our roses, which 
stood near the door. We told him they had been given to 
us by the Bey of Erment. 

"l)o they grow at Erment ?" he asked, examining them 
with great curiosity. " How beautiful ! Why will they not 
grow in Nubia ? " 

We suggested that the climate was probably too hot for 
them. 

He stooped, inhaling their perfume. He looked puzzled. 

''They are very sweet," he said. " Are they roses ? '' 

The question gave us a kind of shock. We coiild hardly 
believe we had reached a land where roses were unknown. 
Yet the Governor, who had smoked a rose-water narghile, 
and drunk rose-sherbet, and eaten conserve of roses all his 
days, recognised them by their perfume only. He had never 
been out of Asslian in his life ; not even as far as Erment. 
And he had never seen a rose in bloom. 

We had hoped to begin the passage of the Cataract on the 
morning of the day following our arrival at the frontier; but 
some other dahabeeyah, it seemed, was in the act of fighting 
its way up to Philse ; and till that boat was through, neither 
the Sheykh nor his men would be ready for us. At eight 
o'clock in the morning of the next day but one, however, 
they promised to take us in hand. We were to pay £12 
English for the double journey ; that is to say, £9 down, 
and the remaining £3 on our return to Assuan. 

Such was the treaty concluded between ourselves and the 



ASSl^AN AND ELEPHANTINE. 177 

Sheykh of the Cataract at a solemn conclave over wliicli the 
Governor, assisted by the Kadi and Mudir, presided. 

Having a clear day to spend at Assuan, we of course gave 
part thereof to Elephantine, which in the inscriptions is 
called Abu, or the Ivory Island. Tliere may perhaps have 
been a depot, or " treasure-city," here for the ]n'ecious things 
of the Upper Nile country ; the gold of Nubia and the 
elephant-tusks of Kush. 

It is a very beautiful island — rugged and lofty to the 
south ; low and fertile to the north ; with an exquisitely 
varied coast-line full of wooded creeks and miniature beaches, 
in which one might expect at any mojnent to meet Kobinson 
Crusoe with his goat-skin umbrella, or man Friday bending 
under a load of fagots. They are all Fridays h?re, how- 
ever; for Elephantine, being the first Nubian outpost, is 
peopled by Nubians only. It contains two Nubian villages, 
and the mounds of the very ancient city which was tlie capital 
of all Egypt under the Pharaohs of the Vlth Dynast^^, be- 
tween three and four thousand years before Christ. Two 
temples, one of which dated from the reign of Amenhotep 
III, were yet standing here some seventy years ago. They 
were seen by Belzoni in 1815, and had just been destroyed to 
build a palace and barracks when Champollion went up in 
1829. A ruined gateway of the Ptolemaic period and a for- 
lorn-looking sitting statue of Menephtah, the supposed Pha- 
raoh of the Exodus, alone remain to identify the sites on 
which they stood. 

Thick palm-groves and carefully-tilled patches of castor-oil 
and cotton plants, lentils, and durra, make green the heart 
of the island. The Avestern shore is wooded to the water's 
edge. One may walk here in the shade at hottest noon, lis- 
tening to the murmur of the Cataract and seeking for wild 
flowers — which, however, would seem to blossom nowhere 
save in the sweet Arabic name of Geziret-el-Zahr, the Island 
of Flowers. 

Upon the high ground at the southern extremity of the isl- 
and, among rubbish heaps and bleached bones, and human 
skulls, and the sloughed skins of snakes, and piles of parti- 
coloured potsherds, we picked up several bits of inscribed 
terra-cotta — evidently fragments of broken vases. The 
writing was very faint, and in part obliterated. We could 
see that the characters were Greek ; but not even our Idle 
Man was equal to making out a word of the sense. Believ- 
ing them to be mere disconnected scraps to which it would 



1T8 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

be impossible to find the corresponding pieces — taking it for 
granted, also, that they were of comparatively modern date — 
we brought away some three or four as souvenirs of the place, 
and thought no more about them. 

We little dreamed that Dr. Birch, in his cheerless official 
room at the Britisli Museum so many thousand miles away, 
was at this very time occupied in d.^ciphering a collection of 
similar fragments, nearly all of which had been brought from 
this same spot.^ Of the curious interest attaching to these 
illegible scrawls, of the importance they were sliortly to ac- 
quire in the eyes of the learned, of the possible value of any 
chance additions to their number we knew, and could know, 
nothing. Six months later, we lamented our ignorance and 
our lost opportunities. 

For the Egyptians, it seems, used potsherds instead of 
papyrus for short memoranda; and each of these fragments 
which we had picked up contained a record complete in it- 
self. I fear we should have laughed if any one had suggested 
that they might be tax-gatherer's receipts. Yet that is just 
what tiiey were — receipts for government dues collected on 
the frontier during the period of Koman rule in Egypt. 
They were written in Greek, because the Romans deputed 

1 The results of Dr. Birch's labours were given to the public in his 
" Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms," published by order of 
the Trustees of the British Museum in May 1874. Of the contents of case 
99 in the Second Room, he says: " The use of potsherds for documents re- 
ceived a great extension at the time of the Roman Empire, when receipts 
for the taxes were given on these fragments by the collectors of revenue at 
Elephantine or Syene, on the frontier of Egypt. These receipts commenced 
in the reign of Vespasian, a.d. 77, and are found as late as M. Aurelius and 
L. Verus, a.d. 165. It appears from them that the capitation and trades 
tax, which was 16 drachms in a.d. 77, rose to 20 in a.d. 165, having steadily 
Increased. The dues were paid in instalments called merismof, at three 
periods of the year. The taxes were farmed out to publicans, misthotai, 
who appear from their names to have been Greeks. At Elephantine the 
taxes were received by tax-gatherers, prakteres, wlio seem to have been ap- 
pointed as early as the Ptolemies. Their clerks were Egyptians, and they 
had a chest and treasure, phylax." See p. 109, as above; also Birch's His- 
tory of Ancient Pottery, chap. i. p. 45. 

These barren memoranda are not the only literary curiosities found at 
Elephantine. Among the Egyptian MSS. of the Louvre may be seen some 
fragments of the XVIIIth Book of the Iliad, discovered in a tomb upon 
the island. How they came to be buried there no one knows. A lover of 
poetry would like to think, however, that some Greek or Roman officer, 
dying at his post upon this distant station, desired, perhaps, to have his 
Homer laid with him in his grave. 

Note to Second Edition. — Other fragments of the Iliad have been 
found from time to time in various parts of Egypt ; some (now in the 
Louvre) being scrawled, like the above-mentioned tax-receipts, on mere 
potsherds. The finest specimen ever found in Egypt or elsewhere, and the 
earliest, has however been discovered this year, 1888, by Mr. Flinders Petrie 
in the grave of a woman at Hawara, in the Fayum. 



ASSt/AN AND ELEPUAyTINE. 179 

Greek scribes to perform the duties of this unpopular office ; 
but the Greek is so corrupt and the penmansliip so clownish 
that only a few eminent scholars can read them. 

Not all the inscribed fragments found at Elephantine, 
however, are tax-receipts, or written in bad Greek. The 
British Museum contains several in the demotic, or current 
script of the people, and a few in the more learned hieratic 
or priestly hand. The former have not yet been translated. 
They are probably business memoranda and short private let- 
ters of Egyptians of the same period. 

But how came these fragile documents to be preserved, 
when the city in which their writers lived, and the tem})les 
in which they worshipped, have disappeared and left scarce 
a trace behind? Who cast them down among the potsherds 
on this barren hillside ? Are we to suppose that some kind 
of Public Record-Office once occupied the site, and that the 
receipts here stored were duplicates of those given to the 
payers ? Or is it not even more probable that this place was 
the Monte Testaccio of the ancient city, to which all broken 
pottery, written as well as unwritten, found its way sooner 
or later. 

With the exception of a fine fragment of Roman quay 
nearly opposite Assilan, the ruined gateway of Alexander and 
the battered statue of Menephtah are the only objects of 
archaeological interest in the island. But the charm of Ele- 
phantine is the everlasting charm of natural beauty — of 
rocks, of palm-woods, of quiet waters. 

The streets of Assuan are just like the streets of every 
other mud town on the Nile. The bazaars reproduce the 
bazaars of Minieh and Siut. The environs are noisy with 
cafes and dancing girls, like the environs of Esneh and 
Luxor. Into the mosque, where some kind of service was 
going on, we peeped without entering. It looked cool, and 
clean, and spacious; the floor being covered with fine matting, 
and some scores of ostrich-eggs depending from the ceiling. 
In the bazaars we bought baskets and mats of Nubian manu- 
facture, woven with the same reeds, dyed with the s.ame 
colours, shaped after the same models, as those found in the 
tombs at Thebes. A certain oval basket with a vaulted cover, 
of which specimens are preserved in the British Museum, 
seems still to be the pattern most in demand at Assuan. The 
basket-makers have neither changed their fashion nor the 
buyers their taste since the days of Rameses the Great. 

Here also, at a little cupboard of a shop near the Shoe 



180 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Bazaar, we we^-e tempted to spend a few pounds in ostrich 
feathers, which are conveyed to Assuan by traders from the 
Soudan. The merchant brouglit out a feather at a time, 
and seemed in no haste to sell. We also affected indiffer- 
ence. The haggling on botli sides was tremendous. Tlie 
bystanders, as usual, were profoundly interested, and com- 
mented on every word that passed. At last we carried away 
an armful of splendid plumes, most of which measured from 
two and a half to three feet in length. Some were pure 
white, others white tipped with brown. They had been 
neither cleaned nor curled, but were just as they came from 
the hands of the ostrich-hunters. 

By far the most amusing sight in Assuan was the traders' 
camp down near the landing-place. Here were Abyssinians 
like slender-legged baboons ; wild-looking Bishariyah and 
Ababdeh Arabs with flashing eyes and flowing hair ; sturdy 
Nubians the colour of a Barbedienne bronze; and natives of 
all tribes and shades, from Kordofan and Seiinar, the des- 
erts of Bahuda and the banks of the Blue and White Niles. 
Some were returning from Cairo ; others were on their way 
thither. Some, having disembarked their merchandise at 
Mahatta (a village on the other side of the Cataract), liad 
come across the desert to re-embark it at Assuan. Others 
had just disembarked theirs at Assuan, in order to re-embark 
it at Mahatta. Meanwhile, they were living siib Jove ; each 
entrenched in his own little redoubt of piled-up bales and 
packing-cases, like a spider in the centre of his web ; each 
provided with his kettle and coffee-pot, and an old rug to 
sleep and pray upon. One sulky old Turk had fixed up a 
roof of matting, and furnished his den with a Kafas, or 
palm-wood couch ; but he was a self-indulgent exception to 
the rule. 

Some smiled, some scowled, when we passed through the 
camp. One offered us coffee. Another, more obliging than 
the rest, displayed the contents of his packages. Great 
bundles of lion and leopard skins, bales of cotton, sacks of 
henna-leaves, elephant-tusks swathed in canvas and matting, 
strewed the sandy bank. Of gum-arabic alone there must 
have been several hundred bales; each bale sewn up in a raw 
hide and tied with thongs of hippopotamus leather. Towards 
dusk, when the camp-fires were alight and the evening meal 
was in course of preparation, the scene became wonderfully 
picturesque. Lights gleamed; shadows deepened; strange 
figures stalked to and fro, or squatted in groups amid their 



ASS (tan and elephantine. 181 

merchandise. Some were baking flatcakes ; others stirring 
soup, or roasting coffee. A liole scooped in the sand, a 
couple of stones to support tlie kettle, and a handful of dry 
sticks, served for kitchen-range and fuel. Meanwhile all the 
dogs in Assuan prowled round the camp, and a jargon of bar- 
baric tongues came and went with the breeze that followed 
the sunset. 

I must not forget to add that among this motley crowd we 
saw two brothers, natives of Khartiim. We met them iirst in 
the town, and afterwards in the camp. They wore volumi- 
nous white turbans, and flowing robes of some kind of creamy 
cashmere cloth. Their small proud heads and delicate aris- 
tocratic features were modelled on the purest Florentine 
type; their eyes were long and liquid; their complexions, 
free from any taint of Abyssinian blue or Nubian bronze, 
were intensely, lustrously, magnificently black. We agreed 
that we had never seen two such handsome men. They were 
like young and beautiful Dantes carved in ebony ; Dantes 
unembittered by the world, unsicklied by the pale cast of 
thought, and glowing with the life of the warm South. 

Having explored Elephantine and ransacked the bazaars, 
our party dispersed in various directions. Some gave the 
remainder of the day to letter-writing. The Painter, bent on 
sketching, started off in search of a jackal-haunted ruin up a 
wild ravine on the Libyan side of the rivei*. The Writer and 
the Idle Man boldly mounted camels and rode out into the 
Arabian desert. 

Now the camel-riding that is done at Assuan is of the most 
commonplace description, and bears to genuine desert travel- 
ling about the same relation that half-an-hour on the Mer de 
Glace bears to the passage of the Mortaretsch glacier or the 
ascent of Monte Rosa. The short cut from Assuan to Philae, 
or at least the ride to the granite quarries, forms part of every 
dragoman's programme, and figures as the crowning achieve- 
ment of every Cook's tourist. The Arabs themselves perform 
these little journeys much more pleasantly and expeditiously 
on donkeys. They take good care, in fact, never to scale the 
summit of a camel if they can help it. But for the impres- 
sionable traveller, the Assuan camel is de rigueur. In his 
interests are those snarling quadrupeds be-tasselled and be- 
rugged, taken from their regular work, and paraded up and 
down the landing-place. To transport cargoes disembarked 
above and below tlie Cataract is their vocation. Taken from 
this honest calling to perform in an absurd little drama got 



182 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

up especially for the entertainment of tourists, it is no won- 
der if tlie beasts are more tlian commonly ill-tempered. They 
know the vvliole proceeding to be essentially cockney, and 
they resent it accordingly. 

The ride, nevertheless, has its advantages ; not the least 
being that it enables one to realise the kind of work involved 
in any of the regular desert expeditions. At all events, 
it entitles one to claim acquaintance with the ship of the 
desert, and (bearing in mind the probable inferiority of the 
specimen) to form an ex yede judgment of his qualifications. 

The camel has his virtues — so much at least must be 
admitted ; but they do not lie upon the surface. My Buffon 
tells me, for instance, that he carries a fresh-water cistern in 
his stomach; which is meritorious. But the cistern amelio- 
rates neither his gait nor his temper — which are abominable. 
Irreproachable as a beast of burden, he is open to jnany 
objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to 
ride an animal which not only objects to being ridden, but 
cherishes a strong personal antipathy to liis rider. Such, 
liowever, is his amiable peculiarity. You know that he 
hates you, from the moment you first walk round him, won- 
dering where and how to begin the ascent of his hump. He 
does not, in fact, hesitate to tell you so in the roundest terms. 
He swears freely while 3'ou are taking your seat ; snarls if 
you but move in the saddle ; and stares you angrily in the 
face, if you attempt to turn his head in any direction save that 
which he himself prefers. Should you persevere, he tries to 
bite your feet. If biting your feet does not answer, he lies 
down. 

Now the lying-down and getting-up of a camel are perform- 
ances designed for the express purpose of inflicting griev- 
ous bodily harm upon his rider. Thrown twice forward and 
twice backward, punched in his " wind" and damaged in his 
spine, the luckless novice receives four distinct shocks, each 
more violent and unexpected than the last. For this " exe- 
crable hunchback" is fearfully and wonderfully made. He 
has a superfluous joint somewhere in his legs, and uses it to 
revenge himself upon mankind.. 

His paces, however, are more complicated than his joints 
and more trying than his temper. He has four : — a short 
walk, like the rolling of a small boat in a chopping sea; a 
long walk which dislocates every bone in your body; a trot 
that reduces you to imbecility ; and a gallop that is sudden 
death. One tries in vain to imatjine a crime for which the 



assCan and elephantine. 183 

peine forte et dure of sixteen hours on camel-back would not 
be a full and sufficient expiation. It is a punishment to 
which one would not willingly be the means of condemning 
any human being — not even a reviewer. 

They had been down on the bank for hire all day long — 
brown camels and white camels, shaggy camels and smooth 
camels; all with gay worsted tassels on their heads, and rugs 
flung over their high wooden saddles, by way of housings. 
The gentlemen of the Fostat had ridden away liours ago, 
cross-legged and serene; and we had witnessed their demean- 
our with mingled admiration and envy. Now, modestly con- 
scious of our own daring, we prepared to do likewise. It was 
a solemn moment when, having chosen our beasts, we pre- 
pared to encounter the unknown perils of the desert. Wliat 
wonder if the Happy Couple exchanged an affecting farewell 
at parting ? 

We mounted and rode away ; two imps of darkness fol- 
lowing at the heels of our camels, and Salame performing 
the part of bodyguard. Thus attended, we found ourselves 
pitched, swung, and rolled along at a pace that carried us 
rapidly up the slope, past a suburb full of cafes and grinning 
dancing girls, and out into the desert. Our way for the first 
half-mile or so lay among tombs. A great Mohammedan 
necropolis, part ancient, part modern, lies behind Assuan, 
and covers more ground than the town itself. Some scores 
of tiny mosques, each topped by its little cupola, and all more 
or less dilapidated, stand here amid a wilderness of scattered 
tombstones. Some are isolated; some grouped picturesquely 
together. Each covers, or is supposed to cover, the grave of 
a Moslem Santon ; but some are mere commemorative chapels 
dedicated to saints and martyrs elsewhere buried. Of simple 
head-stones defaced, shattered, overturned, propped back to 
back on cairns of loose stones, or piled in broken and dishon- 
oured heaps, there must be many hundreds. They are for 
the most part rounded at the top like ancient Egyptian stelae, 
and bear elaborately carved inscriptions, some of which are 
in the Cufic character, and more than a thousand years old. 
Seen when the sun is bending westward and the shadows 
are lengthening, there is something curiously melancholy and 
picturesque about this City of the Dead in the dead desert. 

Leaving the tombs, we now strike off toAvards the left, 
bound for the obelisk in the quarry, which is the stock sight 
of the place. The horizon beyond Assuan is bounded on all 
sides by rocky heights, bold and picturesque in form, yet 



184 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

scarcely lofty enough to deserve the name of monntains. 
The sandy bottom under our camel's feet is strewn with small 
pebbles, and tolerably firm. Clustered rocks of black and 
red granite profusely inscribed with hieroglyphed records 
crop up here and there, and serve as landmarks just where 
landmarks are needed. For nothing would be easier than to 
miss one's way among these tawny slopes, and to go wander- 
ing off, like lost Israelites, into the desert. 

Winding in and out among undulating hillocks and tracts 
of rolled boulders, we come at last to a little group of cliffs, 
at the foot of which our camels halt unbidden. Here we dis- 
mount, climb a short slope, and find the huge monolith at our 
feet. 

Being cut horizontally, it lies half buried in drifted sand, 
with nothing to show that it is not wholly disengaged and 
ready for transport. Our books tell us, however, that the 
under-cutting has never been done, and that it is yet one with 
the granite bottom on which it seems to lie. Botli ends are 
hidden; but one can pace some sixty feet of its yet visible 
surface. That surface bears the tool-marks of the workmen. 
A slanting groove pitted with wedge-holes indicates where 
it was intended to taper towards the top. Another shows 
where it was to be reduced at the side. Had it been finished, 
this would have been the largest obelisk in the world. The 
great obelisk of Queen Hatshepsu at Karnak, which, as its 
inscriptions record, came also from Assuan, stands ninety-two 
feet high, and measures eight feet square at the base ; ^ but 
this which lies sleeping in the desert would have stood ninety- 
five feet in the shaft, and have measured over eleven feet 
square at the base. We can never know now why it was 
left here, nor guess with what royal name it should have 
been inscribed. Had the king said in his heart that he 
would set up a mightier obelisk than was ever j^et seen by 
eyes of men, and did he die before the block could be ex- 
tracted from the quarry ? Or were the quarrymen driven 
from the desert, and the Pharaoh from his throne, by the 
hungry hordes of Ethiopia, or Syria, or the islands beyond 
the sea ? The great stone may be older than Rameses the 
Great, or as modern as the last of the Romans ; but to give 
it a date, or to divine its history, is impossible. Egyptology, 

1 These are the measurements given in Murray's Handbook. The new 
Englsh translation of Mariette's Itineraire de la Haute Egypte gives the 
obelisk of Hatshepsu 108 feet 10 inches in height. See The Monuments of 
Upper Egypt, translated by Alphonse Mariette: London, 1877. 



ASSUAJST AND ELEPHANTINE. 185 

which has solved the enigma of the Sphinx, is powerless here. 
The obelisk of the quarry holds its secret safe, and holds it 
for ever. 

Ancient Egyptian quarrying is seen under its most striking 
aspect among extensive limestone or sandstone ranges, as at 
Turra and Silsilis ; but the process by which the stone was 
extracted can nowhere be more distinctly traced than at As- 
suan. lu some respects, indeed, the quarries here, though 
on a smaller scale than those lower down the river, are even 
more interesting. Nothing surprises one at Silsilis, for in- 
stance, more than the economy with which the sandstone has 
been cut from the heart of the mountain ; but at Assiian, as 
the material was more precious, so does the economy seem to 
have been still greater. At Silsilis, the yellow cliffs have 
been sliced as neatly as the cheeses in a cheesemonger's 
window. Smooth, upright walls alone mark the place where 
the work has been done ; and the amount of debris is alto- 
gether insignificant. But at Assiian, when extracting gran- 
ite for sculptural purposes, they attacked the form of the 
object required, and cut it out roughly to shape. The great 
obelisk is but one of many cases in point. In the same 
group of rocks, or one very closely adjoining, we saw a rough- 
hewn column, erect and three-parts detached, as well as the 
semi-cylindrical hollow from which its fellow had been taken. 
One curious recess from which a quadrant-shaped mass had 
been cut away puzzled us immensely. In other places the 
blocks appeared to have been coffer-shaped. We sought 
in vain, however, for the broken sarcophagus mentioned in 
Murray. 

But the drifted sands, we may be sure, hide more precious 
things than these. Inscriptions are probably as abundant 
here as in the breccia of Hamamat. The great obelisk must 
have had a fellow, if we only knew where to look for it. The 
obelisks of Queen Hatshepsu, and the sarcophagi of many 
famous kings, might possibly be traced to their beds in these 
quarries. So might the casing stones of the Pyramid of 
Menkara, the massive slabs of the Temple of the Sphinx, 
and the walls of the sanctuary of Philip Aridaeus at Karnak. 
Above all, the syenite Colossus of the Ramesseum and the 
monster Colossus of Tanis,^ which was the largest detached 

1 For an account of the discovery of this enormous statue and the meas- 
urements of its various parts, see Tanis, Part I, by W. M. Flinders Petrie, 
chap. ii. pp. 22 et seq. published by tlie Egypt Exploration Fund, 1885. 
[Note to Second Edition.] 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

statue in the world, must each have left its mi<,^hty matrix 
among the rocks close by. But these, like the song of the 
sirens or the alias of Achilles, though '-'not beyond all con- 
jecture," are among the things that will never now be dis- 
covered. 

As regards the process of quarrying at Assuan, it seems 
that rectangular granite blocks were split off:' here^ as the 
softer limestone and sandstone elsewhere, by means of 
wooden wedges. These were fitted to holes already cut for 
their reception; and, being saturated with v.-ater, split the 
hard rock by mere force of expansion. Every quarried mass 
hereabouts is marked with rows of these wedge-holes. 

Passing by the way a tiny oasis where there were camels, 
and a well, and an idle water-wheel, and a patch of emerald- 
green barley, we next rode back nearly to the outskirts of 
Assuan, where, in a dismal hollow on the verge of the desert, 
may be seen a small, half-buried temple of Ptolemaic times. 
Traces of colour are still visible on the winged globe under 
the cornice, and on some mutilated bas-reliefs at either side 
of the principal entrance. Seeing that the interior was 
choked with rubbish, we made no attempt to go inside ; but 
rode away again without dismounting. 

And now, there being still an hour of daylight, we signi- 
fied our intention of making for the top of the nearest hill, 
in order to see the sun set. This, clearly, was an unheard-of 
innovation. The camel-boys stai'ed, shook their heads, pro- 
tested there was " inafeesh sikkeli " (no road), and evidently 
regarded us as lunatics. The camels planted their splay feet 
obstinately in the sand, tried to tnrn back, and, when obliged 
to yield to the force of circumstances, abused us all the way. 
Arrived at the top, we found ourselves looking down upon 
the island of Elephantine, with the Nile, the town, and the 
dahabeeyahs at our feet. A prolongation of the ridge on 
which we were standing led, however, to another height 
crowned by a ruined tomb ; and seemed to promise a view of 
the Cataract. Seeing us prepare to go on, the camel-boys 
broke into o, furore of remonstrance, which, but for Salame's 
big stick, would have ended in downright mutiny. Still we 
pushed forward, and, still dissatisfied, insisted on attacking a 
third summit. The boys now trudged on in sullen despair. 
The sun was sinking ; the way was steep and difficult ; the 
night would soon come on. If the Howadji chose to break 
their necks, it concerned nobody but themselves ; but if the 
camels broke theirs, who was to pay for them ? 




<^ 



Elephantine . 



ASSd'AN AND ELEPHANTINE. 187 

Such — expressed half in broken Arabic, half in gestures 
— were the sentiments of our ^^outhful Nubians. Nor were 
the camels themselves less emphatic. The}' grinned ; they 
sniffed; they snorted; they snarled; they disputed every 
foot of the way. As for mine (a gawky, supercilious beast 
with a bloodshot eye and a battered Roman nose), I never 
heard any dumb animal make use of so much bad language 
in my life. 

The last hill was very steep and stony; but the view from 
the top was magnificent. We had now gained the highest 
point of the ridge which divides the valley of the Nile from 
the Arabian desert. Tlie Cataract, widening away reach 
after reach and studded with innumerable rocky islets, looked 
more like a lake than a river. Of the Libyan desert we could 
see nothing beyond the opposite sand-slopes, gold-rimmed 
against the sunset. The Arabian desert, a boundless waste 
edged by a serrated line of purple peaks, extended eastward 
to the remotest horizon. We looked down upon it as on a 
raised map. The Moslem tombs, some five hundred feet 
below, showed like toys. To the right, in a wide valley 
opening away southwards, we recognised that ancient bed of 
the Nile which serves for the great highway between Egypt 
and Nubia. At the end of the vista, some very distant palms 
against a rocky background pointed the way to Philae. 

Meanwhile the sun was fast sinking — the lights were 
crimsoning — the shadows were lengthening. All was silent ; 
all was solitary. We listened, but could scarcely hear the 
murmur of the rapids. We looked in vain for the quarry of 
the obelisk. It was but one group of rocks among scores of 
others, and to distinguish it at this distance was impossible. 

Presently, a group of three or four black figures, mounted 
on little grey asses, came winding in and out among the 
tombs, and took the road to Philae. To us they were mov- 
ing specks ; but our lynx-eyed camel-boys at once recognised 
the '' Sheykh el Shellal " (Sheykh of the Cataract) and his 
retinue. More dahabeeyahs had come in ; and the worthy 
man, having spent the day in Assuan visiting, palavering, 
bargaining, was now going home to Mahatta for the night. 
We watched the retreating riders for some minutes, till twi- 
light stole up the ancient channel like a flood, and drowned 
them in warm shadows. 

The afterglow had faded off the heights when we at length 
crossed the last ridge, descended the last hill-side, and re- 
gained the level from which we had started. Here once 



188 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

more we met the Fostat party. They had ridden to Philge 
and back by the desert, and were apparently all the worse 
for wear. Seeing us, they urged their camels to a trot, and 
tried to look as if they liked it. The Idle Man and the 
Writer wreathed their countenances in ghastly smiles, and 
did likewise. Not for worlds would they have admitted that 
they found the pace difficult. Such is the moral influence of 
the camel. He acts as a tonic ; he promotes the Spartan vir- 
tues ; and if not himself heroic, is at least the cause of hero- 
ism in others. 




CAMEL AT ASSUAN, 

It was nearly dark when we reached Asslian. The cafes 
were all alight and astir. There were smoking and coffee- 
drinking going on outside ; there were sounds of music and 
laughter within. A large private house on the opposite side 
of the road was being decorated, as if for some festive occa- 
sion. Flags were flying from the roof, and two men were 
busy putting up a gaily-painted inscription over the doorway. 
Asking, as was natural, if there Avas a marriage or a fantasia 
afoot, it was not a little startling to be told that these were 
signs of mourning, and that the master of the house had died 
during the interval that elapsed between our riding out and 
riding back again. 

In Egypt, where the worship of ancestry and the preserva- 
tion of the body were once among the most sacred duties of 
the living, they now make short work with their dead. He 
was to be buried, they said, to-morrow morning, three hours 
after sunrise. 



THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 189 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 

At Assftan, one bids good-bye to Egypt and enters Nubia 
through tlie gates of the Cataract — which is, in truth, no 
cataract, but a succession of rapids extending over two-thirds 
of tlie distance between Elephantine and Philse. The Nile — 
diverted from its original course by some unrecorded catas- 
trophe, the nature of which has given rise to much scientific 
conjecture — here spreads itself over a rocky basin bounded 
by sand-slopes on the one side, and bj^ granite cliffs on the 
other. Studded with numberless islets, divided into number- 
less channels, foaming over sunken rocks, eddying among 
water-worn boulders, now shallow, now deep, now loitering, 
now hurrying, here sleeping in the ribbed hollow of a tiny 
sand-drift, there circling above the vortex of a hidden whirl- 
pool, the river, whether looked upon from the deck of the 
dahabeeyah or the heights along the shore, is seen everywhere 
to be fighting its way through a labyrinth, the paths of which 
have never yet been mapped or sounded. 

Those paths are everywhere difficult and everywhere dan- 
gerous ; and to that labyrinth the Shell alee, or Cataract-Arab, 
alone possesses the key. At the time of the inundation, 
when all but the highest rocks are under water, and naviga- 
tion is as easy here as elsewhere, the Shellalee's occupation 
is gone. But as the floods subside and travellers begin to 
reappear, his work commences. To haul dahabeeyahs up 
those treacherous rapids by sheer stress of rope and muscle ; 
to steer skilfully down again through channels bristling with 
rocks and boiling with foam, becomes now, for some five 
months of the year, his principal industry. It is hard work ; 
but he gets well paid for it, and his profits are always on the 
increase. From forty to fifty dahabeeyahs are annually 
taken up between November and March ; and every year 
brings a larger influx of travellers. Meanwhile, accidents 
rarely happen ; prices tend continually upwards ; and the 



190 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Catai'act Arabs make a little fortune by their singular 
monopoly.-^ 

The scenery of the First Cataract is like nothing else in 
the world — except the scenery of the Second. It is alto- 
gether new, and sti-ange, and beautiful. It is incomprehensi- 
ble that travellers should have written of it in general with so 
little admiration. They seem to have been impressed by the 
wildness of the waters, by the quaint forms of the rocks, by 
the desolation and grandeur of the landscape as a M'hole ; but 
scarcely at all by iis beauty — ■ which is paramount. 

The Nile here widens to a lake. Of the islands, which it 
would hardly be an exaggeration to describe as some hunarei.s 
in number, no two are alike. Some are piled up like the rocks 
at the Land's End in Cornwall, block upon block, column 
upon column, tower upon tower, as if reared by the hand of 
man. Some are green with grass ; some golden with slopes 
of drifted sand ; some planted with rows of blossoming lupins, 
purple and white. Others again are mere cairns of loose 
blocks, with here and there a perilously balanced top-boulder. 
On one, a singular upright moi'^slith, like a menhir, stands 
conspicuous, as if placed there to commemorate a date, or to 
point the way to Philse. Another mass rises out of the water 
squared and buttressed, in the likeness of a fort. A third, 
humped and shining like the wet body of some amphibious 
beast, lifts what seems to be a horned head above the surface 
of the rapids. All these blocks and boulders and fantastic 
rocks are granite ; some red, some purple, some black. Their 
forms are rounded by the friction of ages. Those nearest the 
brink reflect the sky like mirrors of burnished steel. Royal 
ovals and hieroglyphed inscriptions, fresh as of yesterday's 
cutting, start out here and there from those glittering surfaces 
with startling distinctness. A few of the larger islands are 
crowned with clumps of palms ; and one, the loveliest of any, 
is completely embowered in gum-trees and acacias, dom and 
date palms, and feathery tamarisks, all festooned together 
under a hanging canopy of yellow-blossomed creepers. 

On a brilliant Sunday morning, with a favourable wind, we 
entered on this fairy archipelago. Sailing steadily against 
the current, we glided away from Assuan, left Elephantine 
behind, and found ourselves at once in the midst of the 

1 The increase of steamer traffic has considerably altered the conditions 
of Nile travelling since this Avas written, and fewer dahabeeyahs are conse- 
quently employed. By those who can afford it, and who really desire to 
get the utmost pleasure, instruction, and interest from the trip, the daha- 
Beeyah will, however, always be preferred. [Note to Second EditioH.J 



THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 191 

islands. From this moment every turn of the tiller disclosed 
a fresh point of view, and we sat on deck, spectators of a 
moving panorama. The diversity of subjects was endless. 
The combinations of form and colour, of light and shadow, of 
foreground and distance, were continually changing. A boat 
or a few figures alone were wanting to complete the pictur- 
esqueness of the scene ; but in all those cliannels, and among 
all those islands, we saw no sign of any living creature. 

Meanwhile the Sheykh of the Cataract — a flat-faced, fishy- 
eyed old Nubian, with his head tied up in a dingy yellow silk 
handkerchief — sat apart in solitary grandeur at the stern, 
smoking a long chibouque. Behind him squatted some five 
or six dusky strangers ; and a new steersman, black as a 
negro, had charge ot the helm. This new steersman was our 
pilot for Nubia. From Assuan to Wady Halfeh, and back 
again to Assuar, \ii alone was now held responsible for the 
safety of the dahabeeyah and all on board. 

At length a general stir among the crew warned us of the 
near neighbourhood of the first rapid. Straight ahead, as if 
ranged along the dyke of a weir, a cliain of small islets barred 
the way ; while the current, divided into three or four head- 
long torrents, came rushing down the slope, and reunited at 
the bottom in one tumultuous race. 

That we should ever get the Philse up that hill of moving 
water seemed at first sight impossible. Still our steersman 
held on his course, making for the widest channel. Still the 
Sheykh smoked iraperturbably. Presently, without remov- 
ing the pipe from his mouth, he delivered the one word — 
" Roohh ! " (Forward ! ) 

Instantly, evoked by his nod, the rocks swarmed witli 
natives. Hidden till now in all sorts of unseen corners, they 
sprang out shouting, gesticulating, laden with coils of rope, 
leaping into the thick of the rapids, splashing like water- 
dogs, bobbing like corks, and making as much show of energy 
as if they were going to haul us up Niagara. The thing was 
evidently a coup de theatre, like the apparition of Clan Alpine's 
warriors in the Donna del Lago — with bakhshish in the 
background. 

The scene that followed was curious enough. Two ropes 
were carried from the dahabeeyah to the nearest island, and 
there made fast to the rocks. Two ropes from the island 
were also brought on board the dahabeeyah. A double file 
of men on deck, and another double file on shore, then ranged 
themselves along the ropes ; the Sheykh gave the signal ; 



192 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

and, to a wild chanting accompaniment and a movement like 
a barbaric Sir Roger de Coverlej dance, a system of double 
hauling began, by means of which the huge boat slowly and 
steadily ascended. We may have been a quarter of an hour 
going up the incline ; though it seemed much longer. Mean- 
while, as they warmed to their work, the men chanted louder 
and pulled harder, till the boat went in at last with a rush, 
and swung over into a pool of comparatively smooth water. 

Having moored here for an hour's rest, we next repeated 
the performance against a still stronger current a little higher 
up. This time, however, a rope broke. Down went the 
haulers, like a row of cards suddenly tipped over — round 
swung the Philse, receiving the whole rush of the current on 
her beam ! Luckily for us, the other rope held fast against 
the strain. Had it also broken, we must have been wrecked 
then and there ignominiously. 

Our Nubian auxiliaries struck work after this. Fate, they 
said, was adverse ; so they went home, leaving us moored 
for the night in the pool at the top of the first rapid. The 
Sheykh promised, however, that his people should begin 
work next morning at dawn, and get us through before sun- 
set. Next morning came, however, and not a man appeared 
upon the scene. At about mid-day they began dropping in, 
a few at a time ; hung about in a languid, lazy way for a 
couple of hours or so ; moved us into a better position for 
attacking the next rapid ; and then melted away mysteriously 
by twos and threes among the rocks, and were no more seen. 

We now felt that our time and money were being reck- 
lessly squandered, and we resolved to bear it no longer. Our 
Painter therefore undertook to remonstrate with the Sheykh, 
and to convince him of the error of his ways. The Sheykh 
listened; smoked; shook his head ; replied that in the Cata- 
ract, as elsewhere, there were lucky and unlucky days, days 
when men felt inclined to work, and days when they felt 
disinclined. To-day, as it happened, they felt disinclined. 
Being reminded that it was unreasonable to keep us three 
days going up five miles of river, and that there was a gov- 
ernor at AssAan to whom we should appeal to-morrow unless 
the work went on in earnest, he smiled, shrugged his shoul- 
ders, and muttered something about "destiny." 

Now the Painter, being of a practical turn, had compiled 
for himself a little vocabulary of choice Arabic maledictions, 
which he carried in his note-book for reference when needed. 
Having no faith in its possible usefulness, we were amused 



THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 193 

"by the industry with which he was constantly adding to this 
collection. We looked upon it, in fact, as a harmless pleas- 
antry — just as we looked upon his pocket-revolver, which 
was never loaded ; or his brand-new fowling-piece, which he 
Avas never known to fire. 

But the Sheykli of the Cataract had gone too far. The 
fatuity of that smile would have exasperated the meekest of 
men ; and our Painter was not the meekest of men. So he 
whipped out his pocket-book, ran his finger down the line, 
and delivered an appropriate quotation. His accent may not 
have been faultless ; but there could be no mistake as to the 
energy of his style or the vigour of his language. The effect 
of both was instantaneous. The Sheykh sprang to his feet 
as if he had been shot — turned pale with rage under his 
black skin — vowed the Philse might stay where she was till 
doomsday, for aught that he or his men would do to help her 
a foot farther — bounded into his own rickety sandal and 
rowed away, leaving us to our fate. 

We stood aghast. It was all over with us. We should 
never see Abou Simbel now — never write our names on the 
Kock of Aboosir, nor slake our thirst at the waters of the 
Second Cataract. What was to be done ? Must the Sheykh 
be defied, or propitiated ? Should we appeal to the Governor, 
or should we immolate the Painter ? The majority were for 
immolating the Painter. 

We went to bed that night, despairing ; but lo ! next morn- 
ing at sunrise appeared the Sheykh of the Cataract, all 
smiles, all activity, with no end of ropes and a force of 
two hundred men. We were his dearest friends now. The 
Painter was his brother. He had called out the ban and 
arriere ban of the Cataract in our service. There was noth- 
ing, in short, that he would not do to oblige us. 

The dragoman vowed that he had never seen Nubians work 
as those Nubians worked that day. They fell to like giants, 
tugging away from morn till dewy eve, and never giving 
over till they brought lis round the last corner, and up the 
last rapid. The sun had set, the afterglow had faded, the 
twilight was closing in, when our dahabeeyah slipped at last 
into level water, and the two hundred, with a parting shout, 
dispersed to their several villages. 

We were never known to make light of the Painter's 
repertory of select abuse after this. If that note-book of 
his had been the drowned book of Prospero, or the magical 
Papyrus of Thoth fished up anew from the bottom of the 



194 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Nile, we could not have regarded it with a respect more 
nearly bordering upon awe. 

Though there exists no boundary line to mark where 
Egypt ends and Nubia begins, the nationality of the races 
dwelling on either side of that invisible barrier is as sharply 
defined as though an ocean divided tliein. Among the Shel- 
lalee, or Cataract villagers, one comes suddenly into the 
midst of a people that have apparently nothing in common 
witli the population of Egypt. They belong to a lower 
ethnological type, and they speak a language derived from 
purely African sources. Contrasting with our Arab sailors 
the sulky-looking, half-naked, muscular savages who thronged 
about the Philae during her passage up the Cataract, one could 
not but perceive that they are to this day as distinct and infe- 
rior a people as when llieir Egyptian conquerors, massing 
together in one contemptuous epithet all nations south of the 
frontier, were wont to speak of them as "the vile race of 
Kush." Time has done little to change them since those 
early days. Some Arabic words have crept into their vocab- 
ulary. Some modern luxuries — as tobacco, coffee, soap, and 
gunpowder — have come to be included in the brief catalogue 
of their daily wants. But in most other respects they are 
living to this day as they lived in the time of the Pharaohs ; 
cultivating lentils and durra, brewing barley beer, plaiting 
mats and baskets of stained reeds, tracing rude patterns 
upon bowls of gourd-rind, flinging the javelin, hurling the 
boomerang, fashioning buckles of crocodile-skin and bracelets 
of ivory, and supplying Egypt with henna. The dexterity 
with which, sitting as if in a wager boat, they balance them- 
selves on a palm-log, and paddle to and fro about the river, 
is really surprising. This barbaric substitute for a boat is 
probably more ancient than the pyramids. 

Having witnessed the passage of the first few rapids, we 
were glad to escape from the dahabeeyah, and spend our time 
sketching here and there on the borders of the desert, and 
among the villages and islands round about. In all Egypt 
and Nubia there is no scenery richer in picturesque bits than 
the scenery of the Cataract. An artist might pass a winter 
there, and not exhaust the pictorial wealth of those five 
miles which divide Assuan from Philae. Of tortuous creeks 
shut in by rocks fantastically piled — of sand-slopes golden 
to the water's edge — of placid pools low-lying in the midst 
of lupin-fields and tracts of tender barley — of creaking Sak- 
kiehs, half hidden among palms and dropping water as they 



THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 195 

turn — of mud dwellings, here clustered together in hollows, 
there perched separately on heights among the rocks, and 
perpetuating to this day the form and slope of Egyptian 
pylons — of rude boats drawn up in sheltered coves, or going 
to pieces high and dry upon the sands — of water-washed 
boulders of crimson, and black, and purple granite, on which 
the wild fowl cluster at mid-day and the iisher spreads his 
nets to dry at sunset — of camel, and caravans, and camps 
on shore — of cargo-boats and cangias on the river — of wild 
figures of half-naked athletes — of dusky women decked 
with barbaric ornaments, unveiled, swift-gliding, trailing 
long robes of deepest gentian blue — of ancient crones, and 
little naked children like live bronzes — of these, and a hun- 
dred other subjects, in infinite variety and combination, 
there is literally no end. It is all so picturesque, indeed, so 
biblical, so poetical, that one is almost in da^iger of for- 
getting that the places are something more than beautiful 
backgrounds, and that the people are not merely appropriate 
figures placed there for the delight of sketchers, but are 
made of living flesh and blood, and moved by hopes, and 
fears, and sorrows, like our own. 




SOUOAN T15ADER8 AT MAHATTA. 



Mahatta — green with sycamores and tufted palms ; nes- 
tled in the hollow of a little bay ; half-islanded in the rear 
by an arm of backwater, curved and glittering like the blade 
of a Turkish scimetar — is by far the most beautifully situ- 
ated village on the ISTile. It is the residence of the principal 
Sheykh, and, if one may say so, is the capital of the Cataract. 



196 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The houses lie some way back from the river. The bay- 
is thronged with native boats of all sizes and colours. Men. 
and. camels, women and. children, donkeys, dogs, merchandise, 
and temporary huts put together with poles and matting, 
crowd, the sandy shore. It is Assuan over again ; but on a 
larger scale. The shipping is tenfold more numerous. The 
traders' camp is in itself a village. The beach is half a 
mile in length, and a quarter of a mile in the slope down 
to the river. Mahatta is, in fact, the twin port to Assuan. 
It lies, not precisely at the other extremity of the great 
valley between Assuan and Philse, but at the nearest 
accessible point above the Cataract. It is here that the 
Soudan traders disembark their goods for re-embarkation at 
Assuan. Such rickety, barbaric-looking craft as these Nu- 
bian cangias we had not yet seen on the river. They looked, 
as old and obsolete as the Ark. Some had curious carved 
verandahs outside the cabin-entrance. Others were tilted 
up at the stern like Chinese junks. Most of them had been 
slavers in the palmy days of Defterdar Bey ; plying then as 
now between Wady Halfeh and Mahatta; discliarging their 
human cargoes at this point for re-shipment at Assuan ; and 
rarely passing the Cataract, even at the time of inundation. 
If their wicked old timbers coiild have spoken, they might 
have told us many a black and bloody tale. 

Going up through the village and the palm-gardens, and 
turning off in a north-easterly direction towards the desert, 
one presently comes out about midway of that valley to 
which I have made allusion more than once already. No 
one, however unskilled in physical geography, could look 
from end to end of that huge furrow and not see that it was 
once a river-bed. We know not for how many tens of thou- 
sands, or hundreds of thousands, of years the Nile may have 
held on its course within those original bounds. Neither 
can we tell when it deserted them. It is, however, quite 
certain that the river flowed that way within historic times ; 
that is to say, in the days of Amenemhat III {circa b.c. 2800). 
So much is held to be proven by certain inscriptions^ which 
record the maximum height of the inundation at Semneli 

' " The most important discovery which we have made here, and which 
I shall only mention briefly, is a series of shoit rock-inscriptions, which 
mark the highest rises of the Nile during a series of years under the 
government of Amenemhat III and of his immediate successors. . . . 
They prove that the river, above four thousand years ago, rose more than 
twenty-four feet higher than now, and thersby must have produced totally 
different conditions in the inundation and in the whole surface of the 



THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 197 

during various years of that king's reign. The Nile then 
rose in Ethiopia to a level some 27 feet in excess of the high- 
est point to which it is ever known to attain at the present 
day. I am not aware what relation the height of this ancient 
bed bears to the levels recorded at Semneh, or to those now 
annually self-registered upon the furrowed banks of Philae ; 
but one sees at a glance, without aid of measurements or 
hydrographic science, that if the river were to come down 
again next summer in a mighty "bore," the crest of which 
rose 27 feet above the highest ground now fertilised by the 
annual overflow, it would at once refill its long-deserted bed, 
and convert Assuan into an island. 

Granted, then, that the Kile flowed through the desert in 
the time of Amenemhat III, there must at some later period 
have come a day when it suddenly ran dry. This catastro- 
phe is supposed to have taken place about the time of the 
expulsion of the Hyksos (circa B.C. 1703), when a great dis- 
ruption of the rocky barrier at Silsilis is thought to have 
taken place ; so draining Nubia, which till now had |)la,yed 
the part of a vast reservoir, and dispersing the pent-up floods 
over the plains of Southern Egypt. It would, however, be 
a mistake to conclude that the Nile was by this catastrophe 
turned aside in order to be precipitated in the direction of 
the Cataract. One arm of the river must always have taken 
the present lower and deeper course ; while the other must 
of necessity have run low — perhaps very nearly dry — as 
the inundation subsided every spring. 

There remains no monumental record of this event; but 
the facts speak for themselves. The great channel is there. 
The old Nile-mud is there — buried for the most part in sand, 

ground, both above and below this spot." — Lepsius's Letters from Egypt, 
etc., Letter xxv'. 

" The highest rise of the Nile in each year at Semn ih was registered by 
a mark indicating the year of the king's reign, cut in granite, either on 
one of the blocks forming the foundation of the fortress, or on the cliff, 
and particularly on the east or right bank, as best adapted for the purpose. 
Of these markings eighteen still remain, tliirteen of them having been 
made in the reign of Mosris (A.menemhat III) and five in the time of 
his next two successors. . . . We have here presented to us the remark- 
able facts that the highest of the records now legible, viz. that of the thirt'eth 
year of the reign of Amenemhat, according to exact measurements which 
I made, is 8.17 metres (26 feet 8 inches) higher than the highest level to 
which the Nile rises in years of the greatest floods ; and, further, that tha 
lowest mark, which is on the east bank and indicated the fifteenth year 
of the same king, is still 4.14 metres (13 feet G^inches) ; and the single mark 
on the west bank indicating the ninth year, is 2.77 metres (9 feet) above 
the highest level." — Lepsius's Letter to Professor Ehrenherg. See Appen- 
dix to the above. 



198 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

but still visible on many ?« rocky shelf and plateau between. 
Assuan and Philse. There are even places where the surface 
of the mass is seen to be scooped out, as if by the sudden 
rush of the departing waters. Since that time, the tides of 
war and commerce have flowed in their place. Every con- 
quering Thothmes and Rameses bound for the land of Kush, 
led his armies that way. Sabacon, at the head of his Ethio- 
pian hordes, took that short cut to the throne of all the 
Pharaohs. The French under Desaix, pursuing the Mem- 
looks after the battle of the Pyramids, swept down that pass 
to Philae. Meanwhile the whole trade of the Soudan, how- 
ever interrupted at times by the ebb and flow of war, has also 
set that way. We never crossed those five miles of desert 
without encountering a train or two of baggage-camels laden 
either with European goods for the far South., or with Ori- 
ental treasures for the North. 

I shall not soon forget an Abyssinian caravan which we 
met one day just coming out from Maliatta. It consisted of 
seventy camels laden with elephant tusks. The tusks, which 
were about fourteen feet in length, were packed in half-dozens 
and sewn up in buffalo hides. Each camel was slung with 
two loads, one at either side of the hump. There must have 
been about eight hundred and forty tusks in all. Beside 
each shambling beast strode a bare-footed Nubian. Follow- 
ing these, on the back of a gigantic camel, came a hunting 
leopard in a wooden cage, and a wild cat in a basket. Last 
of all marched a coal-black Abyssinian nearly seven feet in 
height, magnificently shawled and turbaned, with a huge 
scimetar dangling by his side, and in his belt a pair of enor- 
mous inlaid seventeenth-century pistols, such as would have 
become the holsters of Prince Rupert. This elaborate war- 
rior represented the guard of the caravan. The hunting 
leopai'd and the wild cat were for Prince Hassan, the third 
son of the Viceroy. Tlie ivory was for exportation. Any- 
thing more picturesque than this procession, with the dust 
driving before it in clouds, and the children following it out 
of the village, it would be difficult to conceive. One longed 
for Gerome to paint it on the spot. 

The rocks on either side of the ancient river-bed are 
profusely hieroglyphed. These inscriptions, together with 
others found in the adjacent quarries, range over a period of 
between three and four thousand years, beginning with 
the early reigns of the Ancient Empire, and ending with the 
Ptolemies and CaBsars. Some are mere autograplis. Others 



THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT. 199 

run to a considerable length. Many are headed Avith figures 
of gods and worshippers. These, however, are for the most 
part mere graffiti, ill drawn and carelessly sculptured. The 
records they illustrate are chiefly votive. The passer-by 
adores the gods of the Cataract; implores their protection ; 
registers his name, and states the object of his journey. 
The votaries are of various ranks, periods, and nationalities ; 
but the formula in most instances is pretty much tlie same. 
Now it is a citizen of Thebes performing the pilgrimage 
to Philse ; or a general at the head of his troops return- 
ing from a foray in Ethiopia; or a tributary Prince doing 
homage to Rameses the Great, and associating his suzerain 
with the divinities of the place. Occasionally we come upon 
a royal cartouche and a pompous catalogue of titles, setting 
forth how the Pharaoh himself, the Golden Hawk, the Son 
of Ra, the Mighty, tlie Invincible, the Godlike, passed that 
wav. 



PilAKAOH'S BED, PHIL.i;. 

It is curious to see how royalty, so many thousand j^ears 
ago, set the fashion in names, just as it does to this day. 
Nine-tenths of the ancient travellers who left their signa- 
tures upon these rocks were called Rameses or Thothraes or 
Usertasen. Others, still more ambitious, took the names of 
gods. Ampere, who hunted diligently for inscriptions both 
here and among the islands, found the autographs of no end 
of merely mortal Amens and Hathors.^ 

1 For copies and translations of a large number of the graffiti of Assfian, 
see Lepsius's Denkmdler ; also, for the most recent and the fullest collec- 



200 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Our three days' detention in the Cataract was followed by 
a fourth of glassy calm. There being no breath of air to fill 
our sails and no footing for the trackers, we could now get 
along only by dint of hard punting ; so that it was past mid- 
day before the Philae lay moored at last in the shadow of 
the holy island to which she owed her name. 

tion of the rock-cut inscriptions of Assuan and its neighbourhood, includ- 
ing the hitherto uncopied inscriptions of the Saba Rigaleh Valley, of 
Elephantine, of the rocks above Silsileh, etc. etc., see Mr. W. M. Flinders 
Petrie's latest volume, entitled A Season's Work in Egypt, 1887, published 
by Field and Tuer, 1888. [Note to Second Edition.] 




FiHST Cataract 



PHILM. ■ 201 



CHAPTER XIL 

Having been for so many days within easy reach of Philse, 
it is Dot to be supposed that we were content till now with 
only an occasional glimpse of its towers in the distance. On 
the contrary, Ave had found our way thither towards the close 
of almost every day's excursion. We had approached it by 
land from the desei't ; by water in the felucca ; from Mahatta 
by way of the path between the cliffs and the river. When 
I add that we moored here for a night and the best part of 
two days on our way up the river, and again for a week 
when we came down, it will be seen that we had time to 
learn the lovel}^ island by heart. 

The approach by water is quite the most beautiful. Seen 
from the level of a small boat, the island, with its palms, its 
colonnades, its pylons, seems to rise out of the river like a 
mirage. Piled rocks frame it in on either side, and purple 
mountains close up the distance. As the boat glides nearer 
between glistening boulders, those sculptured towers rise 
higher and ever higher against the sky. They show no sign of 
ruin or of age. All looks solid, stately, perfect. One forgets 
for the moment tliat anything is changed. If a sound of an- 
tique chanting were to be borne along the quiet air — if a pro- 
cession of white-robed priests bearing aloft the veiled ark 
of the God, were to come sweeping round between the palms 
and the pylons — we should not think it strange. 

Most travellers land at the end nearest the Cataract ; so 
coming upon the principal temple from behind, and seeing it 
in reverse order. We, however, bid our Arabs row round to 
the southern end, where was once a stately landing-place 
with steps down to the river. We skirt the steep banks, 
and pass close under the beautiful little roofless Temple- 
commonly known as Pharaoh's Bed — that Temple which 
has been so often painted, so often photographed, that every 
stone of it, and the platform on which it stands, and the 
tufted palms that cluster round about it, have been since 



202 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

childhood as familiar to our mind's eye as the Sphinx or the 
Pyramids. It is larger, but not one jot less beautiful than 
we had expected. And it is exactly like the photographs. 
Still, one is conscious of perceiving a shade of difference too 
subtle for analysis ; like the difference between a familiar 
face and the reflection of it in a looking-glass. Anyhow, 
one feels that the real Pharaoh's lied will henceforth dis- 
place the photographs in that obscure mental pigeon-hole 
where till now one has been wont to store the well-known 
image; and that even the photographs have undergone some 
kind of change. 

And now the corner is rounded; and the river widens 
away southwards between mountains and palm-groves ; and 
the prow touches the debris of a ruined quay. The bank is 
steep here. We climb ; and a wonderful scene opens before 
our eyes. We are standing at the lower end of a courtyard 
leading up to the propylons of the great Temple. The court- 
yard is irregular in shape, and enclosed on either side by 
covered colonnades. The colonnades are of unequal lengths 
and set at different angles. One is simply a covered walk ; the 
other opens upon a row of small chambers, like a monastic 
cloister opening upon a row of cells. The roofing-stones of 
these colonnades are in part displaced, while here and there 
a pillar or a capital is missing; but the twin towers of the 
propylon, standing out in sharp unbroken lines against the 
sky and covered with colossal sculptures, are as perfect, or 
very nearly as perfect, as in the days of the Ptolemies who 
built them. 

The broad area between the colonnades is honeycombed 
Avith crude-brick foundations; vestiges of a Coptic village of 
early Christian time. Among these we tliread our way to 
the foot of the principal propylon, the entire width of which 
is 120 feet. The toAvers measure 60 feet from base to para- 
pet. These dimensions are insignificant for Egypt ; yet the 
propylon, Avhich Avould look small at Luxor or Karnak, does 
not look small at Phila. The key-note here is not magni- 
tude, but beauty. The island is small — that is to say it 
covers an area about equal to the summit of the Acropolis 
at Athens ; and the scale of the buildings has been deter- 
mined by the size of the island. As at Athens, the ground 
is occupied by one principal Temple of moderate size, and 
several subordinate Chapels. Perfect grace, exquisite pro- 
portion, most varied and capricious grouping, here take the 
place of massiveness ; so lending to Egyptian forms an irreg- 



FllILA^^. 



203 




204 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

ularity of treatment that is almost Gothic, and a lightness 
that is almost Greek. 

And now we catch glimpses of an inner court, of a second 
propylon, of a pillared portico beyond ; while, looking up to 
the colossal bas-reliefs above our heads, we see the usual 
mystic forms of kings and deities, crowned, enthroned, wor- 
shipping and worshipped. These sculptures, which at first 
sight looked no less perfect than the towers, prove to be as 
laboriously mutilated as those of Denderah. The hawk- 
head of Horus and the cow-head of Hathor have here and 
there escaped destruction ; but the human-faced deities are 
literally "sans eyes, sans nose, sans ears, sans everything." 

We enter the inner court — an irregular quadrangle en- 
closed ou the east by an open colonnade, on the west by 
a chapel fronted with Hathor-headed columns, and on the 
north and south sides by the second and first propylons. In 
this quadrangle a cloistral silence reigns. The blue sky 
burns above — the shadows sleep below — a tender twilight 
lies about our feet. Inside the chapel there sleeps perpetual 
gloom. It was built by Ptolemy Euergetes II, and is one of 
that order to Avhich Champollion gave the name of Mammisi. 
It is a most curious place, dedicated to Hathor and commem- 
orative of the nurture of Horus. On the blackened Avails 
within, dimly visible by the faint light which struggles 
through screen and doorway, we see Isis, the wife and sister 
of Osiris, giving birth to Horus. On the screen panels out- 
side we trace the story of his infancy, education, and growth. 
As a babe at the breast, he is nursed in the lap of Hathor, 
the divine foster-mother. As a young child, he stands at 
his mother's knee and listens to the playing of a female 
harpist (we saw a bare-footed boy the other day in Cairo 
thrumming upon a harp of just the same shape, and with 
precisely as many strings) ; as a youth, he sows grain in 
honour of Isis, and offers a jewelled collar to Hathor. This 
Isis, with her long aquiline nose, thin lips, and haughty 
aspect, looks like one of the complimentary portraits so 
often introduced among the temple sculptures of Egypt. It 
may represent one of the two Cleopatras wedded to Ptolemy 
Physcon. 

Two greyhounds with collars round their necks, are sculp- 
tured on the outer wall of another small chapel adjoining. 
These also look like portraits. Perhaps they were the 
favourite dogs of some high priest of Philee. 

Close against the greyhounds and upon the same wall- 



PHIL^. 205 

space, is engraven that famous copy of the inscription of the 
Rosetta Stone first observed here by Lepsius in a.d. 1843. 
It neither stands so high nor looks so illegible as Ampere 
(with all the jealousy of a Champollionist and a Frenchman) 
is at such pains to make out. One would have said that it 
was in a state of more than ordinarily good preservation. 

As a reproduction of the Rosetta decree, however, the 
Philee version is incomplete. The Rosetta text, after setting 
forth with official pomposity the victories and munificence 
of tlie King, Ptolemy V, the Ever-living, the Avenger of 
Egypt, concludes by ordaining that the record thereof shall 
be engraven in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek characters, 
and set up in all temples of the first, second, and third class 
throughout the Empire. Broken and battered as it is, the 
precious black basalt^ of the British Museum fulfils these 

1 Mariette, at the end of his Aper^it de I'Histoire d'Ef/ypte, gives the fol- 
lowing succinct account of the Rosetta Stone, and the discovery of Cham- 
poUion : — 

" Decouverte, il y a 65 ans environ, par des soldats fran9ais qui creusaient 
un retranchement pres d'une redoute situee a Rosette, la pierre qui porte ce 
nom a joue le plus grand role dans I'archeologie egyptienne. Sur la face 
principale sont gravees trois inscriptions. Les deux premieres sont et langue 
egyptienne et ecrites dans les deux ecritures qui avaient cours a cette 
epoque. L'une est en ecriture hieroglyphique reserve'e aux pretres: elle ne 
compte plus que 14 lignes tronquees par la brisure de la pierre. L'autre est 
en une ecriture cursive appliquee principaleuient aux usages du peuple et 
comprise parlui: celle-ci off re 32 lignes de texte. Enfin, la troisienie in- 
scription de la stele est en langue grecque et comprend 54 lignes. C'est 
dans cette derniere partie que re'sidt) I'interet du monument trouve' a Ro- 
sette. II resulte, en effet, de I'interpretation du texte grec de la stele que 
ce texte n'est qu'une version de I'orjginal transcrit plus haut dans les deux 
ecritures egyptiennes. La Pierre de Rosette nous donne done, dans une 
langue parfaitement connue (le grec) la traduction d'un texte con9u dans 
une autre langue encore ignoree au moment oil la stele a ete de'couverte. 
Qui ne voit I'utilite de cette mention? Remonter du connu a I'inconnu 
n'est pas une operation en dehors des moyens d'une critique prudente, et 
deja Ton devine que si la Pierre de Rosette a acquis dans la science la 
celebvite dont elle jouit aujourd'hiji, c'est qu'elle a foumi la vraie clef de 
cette mysterieuse ecriture dont I'Egypte a si longtemps garde le secret. 
II ne faadrait pas croire cependant que le dechiffrement des hieroglyphes 
au moyen de la Pierre de Rosette ait ete obtenu du premier coup et sans 
tatonnements. Bien au contraire, les savants s'y essayerent sans succes 
pendant 20 ans. Enfin, ChampoUion parut. Jusqu'a lui, on avait cru que 
cliacune des lettres qui composent I'ecriture hieroglyphique etait un sy7n- 
bole ; c'est a dire, que dans une seule de ces lettres etait exprimee une 
idee complete. Le merite de ChampoUion a ete de prouver qu'au contraire 
I'ecriture egyptienne contient des signes qui expriment veritablement des 
sons. En d'autres termes qu'elle est Alphabetiqve. II remarqua, par ex- 
emple, que partout oil dans le texte grec de Rosette se trouve le nom propre 
Ftolemee, on rencontre a I'endroit correspondant du texte egyptien un cer- 
tain nombre designes enfermes dans un encadrement elliptique. II en 
conclut: 1°, que les noms des rois etaient dans le systeme hieroglyphique 
signales a I'attention par une sorte d'ecusson qu'il appela cartouche : 2 °, que 
les signes contenus dans cet ecusson devaient etre lettre pour lettre le nom 



206 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

conditions. The three writings are there. But at Philae, 
though the original hieroglyphic and demotic texts are re- 
produced almost verbatim, the priceless Grreek transcript is 
wanting. It is provided for, as upon the llosetta Stone, in 
the preamble. Space has been left for it at the bottom of 
the tablet. We even fancied we could here and there dis- 
tinguish traces of red ink where the lines should come. But 
not one word of it has ever been cut into the surface of the 
stone. 

Taken by itself, there is nothing strange in this omission; 
but taken in connection with a precisely similar omission in 

de Ptolemea. Deja done en supposant les voj'clles omises, Champollion 
etait en possess. on de cinq leltres — P, T, L, M, S. D'un autre cote, 
Champollion savait, d'apres una seconde inscr.ption grecque gravee sur 
une obelisque de Philae, que sur cet obelisque un cartouche hieroglyphique 
qu'on y voit devait etre celui de Cleopatre. Si sa pi-emiere lecture etait 
juste, le P, le L, et le T, de Ptoleme'e devaient se retrouver dans le second 
nom propre; mais en ineme temps ce second nom propre fournissait un K 
et un R nouveaux. Entin, applique' a d'autres cartouches, I'alphabet encore 
tres imparfait re'vele a Cliaiupollion par les iioms de Cleopatre et de Pto- 
Mmee le mit en possession d'a peu pres toutes les autres consonnes. Comme 
prononciation des signes, Champollion n'avait done pas a hesiter, et des le 
jour oil cette constatation eut lieu, 11 put certifier qu'il etait en possession 
de I'alphabet egyptien. Mais restait la langue; car prononcer des mots 
n'est rien si I'on ne salt pas ce que ces mots veulent dire. Ici le genie de 
Champollion se donna libre cours. II s'aper^ut en effet que son alphabet 
tire des noms propres et applique aux mots de la langue donnait tout 
simplement du Copte. Or, le Copte a son tour est une langue qui, sans 
etre aussi exploree que le grec, n'en etait pas moins depuis longtemps ac- 
cessible. Cette fois le voile etait done completement leve'. La langue 
egyptienne n'est que du Copte ecrit en hie'roglyphes ; ou, pour parler plus 
exactement, le Copte n'est que la langue des anciens Pharaons, ecrite, 
comme nous I'avons dit plus haut, en lettres grecques. Le reste se devine. 
D'lndices en indices, Champollion proceda veritablement du connu a 
I'inconnu, et bientot I'illustre fondateur da I'egyptologie put poser les 
fondements de cette belle science qui a pour objet I'interpretation des 
hieroglyphes. Tel est la Pierre de Rosette." — Apergu de I'llistoire 
d'Efjypte : Mariette Bey, p. 189 et seq. : 1872. 

In order to have done with this subject, it may be as well to mention 
that another trilingual tablet was found by Mariette while conducting his 
excavations at San (Tanis) in 1865. It dates from the ninth year of Ptol- 
emy Euergetes, and the text ordains the deification of Berenice, a daughter 
of the king, then just dead (b.c. 254). This stone, preserved in the mu- 
seum at Boulak, is known as the Stone of San, or the Decree of Canopus. 
Had the Rosetta Stone never been discovered, we may fairly conclude 
that the Canopic Decree would have furnished some later Cliampollion 
with the necessary key to hieroglyphic literature, and that the great dis- 
covery would only have been deferred till the present time. 

Note to Second Edition. — A third copy of the Decree of Canopus, 
the text engraved in hieroglyphs only, was found at Tell Nebireh in 1885, 
and conveyed to the Boulak Museum. The discoverer of this tablet, how- 
ever, missed a much greater discovery, reserved, as it happened, for Mr. 
W. M. F. Petrie, who came to the spot a month or two later, and found 
that the mounds of Tell Nebireh entombed the remains of the famous and 
long-lost Greek city of Naukratis. See Naukratu, Part I, by W. M, F. 
Petrie, published by the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1886. 



PHIL^E. 207 

another inscription a few yards distant, it becomes something 
more than a coincidence. 

This second inscription is cut upon the face of a block of 
living rock which forms part of the foundation of the east- 
ernmost tower of the second propylon. Having enumerated 
certain grants of land made to the Temple by the Vlth and 
Vllth Ptolemies, it concludes, like the first, by decreeing 
that this record of the royal bounty shall be engraven in the 
hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek : that is to say, in the an- 
cient sacred writing of the priests, the ordinary script of the 
people, and the language of the Court. But here again the 
sculptor has left his work unfinished. Here again the in- 
scription breaks off at the end of the demotic, leaving a blank 
space for the third transcript. This second omission suggests 
intentional neglect ; and the motive for such neglect would 
not be far to seek. The tongue of the dominant race is likely 
enough to have been unpopular among the old noble and 
sacerdotal families ; and it may well be that the priesthood 
of Philae, secure in their distant, solitary isle, could with im- 
punity evade a clause which their brethren of the Delta were 
obliged to obey. 

It does not follow that the Greek rule was equally unpop- 
ular. We have reason to believe quite otherwise. The con- 
queror of the Persian invader was in truth the deliverer of 
Egypt. Alexander restored peace to the country, and the 
Ptolemies identified themselves with the interests of the 
people. A dynasty which not only lightened the burdens 
of the poor but respected the privileges of the rich ; which 
honoured the priesthood, endowed the Temples, and com- 
pelled the Tigris to restore the spoils of the Nile, could 
scarcely fail to win the suffrages of all classes. The priests 
of Philse might despise the language of Homer while hon- 
ouring the descendants of Philip of Macedon. They could 
naturalise the King. They could disguise his name in 
hieroglyphic spelling. They could depict him in the tradi- 
tional dress of the Pharaohs. They could crown him with 
the double crown, and represent him in the act of worship- 
ping the gods of his adopted country. Put they could nei- 
ther naturalise nor disguise his language. Spoken or written, 
it was an alien thing. Carven in high places, it stood for 
a badge of servitude. What could a conservative hierarchy 
do but abhor, and, when possible, ignore it ? 

There are other sculptures in this quadrangle which one 
would like to linger over ; as, for instance, the capitals of the 



208 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

eastern colonnade, no two of which are alike, and the gro- 
tesque bas-reliefs of the frieze of the Maramisi. Of these, a 
quasi-heraldic group, representing the sacred hawk sitting in 
the centre of a fan-shaped persea tree between two support- 
ers, is one of the most curious ; the supporters being on the 
one side a maniacal lion, and on the other a Typhonian hip- 
popotamus, each grasping a pair of shears. 

Passing now through the doorway of the second propylon, 
we find ourselves facing the portico — the famous painted 
portico of which we had seen so many sketches that we fan- 
cied we knew it already. That second-hand knowledge goes 
for nothing, however, in presence of the reality ; and we are 
as much taken by surprise as if we were the first travellers 
to set foot within these enchanted precincts. 

For here is a place in which time seems to have stood as 
still as in that immortal palace where everything went to 
sleep for a hundred years. The bas-reliefs on the walls, the 
intricate paintings on the ceilings, the colours upon the capi- 
tals, are incredibly fresh and perfect. These exquisite capi- 
tals have long been the wonder and delight of travellers in 
Egypt. They are all studied from natural forms — from the 
lotus in bud and blossom, the papyrus, and the palm. Con- 
ventionalised with consummate skill, they are at the same 
time so justly proportioned to the height and girth of the 
columns as to give an air of wonderful lightness to the whole 
structure. But above all, it is with the colour — colour con- 
ceived in the tender and pathetic minor of Watteau and 
Lancret and Greuze — that one is most fascinated. Of those 
delicate half-tones, the facsimile in the "Grammar of Orna- 
ment " conveys not the remotest idea. Every tint is softened, 
intermixed, degraded. The pinks are coralline ; the greens 
are tempered with verditer; the blues are of a greenish tur- 
quoise, like the western half of an autumnal evening sky. 

Later on, when we returned to Philee from the Second 
Cataract, the Writer devoted the best part of three days to 
making a careful stiidy of a corner of this portico ; patiently 
matching those subtle variations of tint, and endeavouring to 
master the secret of their combination.' 

1 The famous capitals are not the only specimens of admirable colouring in 
Pliilae. Among the battered bas-reliefs of the great colonnade at the south 
end of the island, there yet remain some isolated patches of uninjured and 
very lovely ornament. See, more particularly, the mosaic pattern upon 
the throne of a divinity just over the second doorway in the western wall ; 
and the designs upon a series of other thrones a little farther along towards 
the north, all most delicately drawn in uniform compartments, picked out 



PHIL^. 



209 




PAINTED COLUMNS, PORTICO OF LAUGIi TEMPLE, PHIL^. 



210 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The annexed woodcut can do no more than reproduce the 
forms. 

Architecturally, this court is unlike any we have yet seen, 
being quite small, and open to the sky in the centre, like 
the atrium of a Roman house/ The light thus admitted 
glows overhead, lies in a square patch on tlie ground below, 
and is reflected upon the pictured recesses of the ceiling. 
At the upper end, where the pillars stand two deep, tliere 
was originally an intercolumnar screen. The rough sides of 
the columns show where the connecting blocks have been 
torn away. The pavement, too, has been pulled up by 
treasure-seekers, and the ground is strewn with broken slabs 
and fragments of shattered cornice. 

These are the only signs of ruin — signs traced not by the 
finger of Time, but by the hand of tlie spoiler. So fresh, so 
fair is all the rest, that we are fain to cheat ourselves for a 
moment into tlie belief that what we see is work not marred, 
but arrested. Those columns, depend on it, are yet unfin- 
ished. That pavement is about to be relaid. It would not 
surprise us to find the masons here to-morrow morning, or 
the sculptor, with mallet and chisel, carrying on that band 
of lotus buds and bees. Far more difficult is it to believe 
that they all struck work for ever some two-and-twenty cen- 
turies ago. 

Here and there, where the foundations have been dis- 
turbed, one sees that the columns are constructed of sculp- 
tured blocks, the fragments of some earlier Temple ; while, 
at a height of about six feet from the ground, a Greek cross 
cut deep into the side of the shaft stamps iipon each pillar 
the seal of Christian worship. 

For the Copts who choked the colonnades and courtyards 
Avith their hovels seized also on the Temples. Some they 
pulled down for building material ; others they appropriated. 
We can never know how much they destroyed ; but two large 
convents on the eastern bank a little higher up the river, and 
a small basilica at the north end of the island, would seem 
to have been built with the magnificent masonry of the 

in the three primary colours, and laid on in flat tints of wonderful purity 
and delicacy. Among these a lotus between two buds, an exquisite little 
sphinx on a pale red ground, and a series of sacred hawks, white upon red, 
alternating with white upon blue, all most exquisitely conventionalised, 
may be cited as examples of absolutely perfect treatment and design in 
polychrome decoration. A more instructive and delightful task than the 
copying of these precious fragments can hardly be commended to students 
and sketchers on the Nile. 



FHIL^E. 



211 



southern quay, as well as with blocks taken from a structure 
which once occupied the south-eastern corner of the great 
colonnade. As for this beautiful painted portico, they turned 
it into a chapel. A little rough-hewn niche in the east wall, 




KARLY CHKISTIAN SI1IUN15, PHII,.K. 



and an overturned credence-table fashioned from a single 
block of limestone, mark the sight of the chancel. The 
Arabs, taking this last for a gravestone, have pulled it up, 
according to their usual practice, in search of treasure buried 
with the dead. On the front of the credence-table, ^ and over 



^ It has since been pointed out by a writer in The Suturdmj Review that 
this credence-table was fashioned with part of a shrine destined for one of 
the captive hawks sacred to Horus. [Note to Second Edition.] 



212 . ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the niche which some unskilled but pious hand has decorated 
with rude Byzantine carvings, the Greek cross is again con- 
spicuous. 

The religious history of Philse is so curious that it is a 
pity it should not find an historian. It shared with Abydos 
and some other places the reputation of being the burial- 
place of Osiris. It was called " the Holy Island." Its very 
soil was sacred. None might land upon its shores, or even 
approach them too nearly, without permission. To obtain 
tliat permission and perform the pilgrimage to the tomb of 
the God, was to the pious Egyptian what the Mecca pilgrim- 
age is to the pious Mussulman of to-day. The most solemn 
oath to which he could give utterance was " By Him who 
sleeps in Philse." 

When and how the island first came to be regarded as the 
resting-place of the most beloved of the Gods does not ap- 
pear ; but its reputation for sanctity seems to have been of 
comparatively modern date. It probably rose into impor- 
tance as Abydos declined. Herodotus, who is supposed to 
have gone as far as Elephantine, made minute enquiry con- 
cerning the river above tliat point ; and he relates that the 
Cataract was in the occupation of " Ethiopian nomads." He, 
however, makes no mention of Philse or its Temples. This 
omission on the part of one who, wherever he went, souglit 
the society of the priests and paid particular attention to the 
religious observances of the country, shows that either Herod- 
otus never got so far, or that the island had not yet become 
the home of the Osirian mysteries. Four hundred years 
later, Diodorus Siculus describes it as the holiest of holy 
places ; while Strabo, writing about the same time, relates 
that Abydos had then dwindled to a mere village. It seems 
possible, therefore, that at some period subsequent to the 
time of Herodotus and prior to that of Diodorus or Strabo, 
the priests of Isis may have migrated from Abydos to Philse ; 
in which case there would have been a formal transfer not 
only of the relics of Osiris, but of the sanctity which had 
attached for ages to their original resting-place. Nor is the 
motive for such an exodus wanting. The ashes of the God 
were no longer safe at Abydos. Situate in the midst of a 
rich corn country on the high road to Thebes, no city soutli 
of Memphis lay inore exposed to the hazards of war. Cam- 
byses had already passed that way. Other invaders might fol- 
low. To seek beyond the frontier that security which might 
no longer be found in Egypt, would seem therefore to be the 



PHIL^. 213 

obvious oouvse of a priestly guild devoted to its trust. This, 
of course, is mere coujecture, to be taken for what it may be 
worth. The decadence of Abydos coincides, at all events, 
with the growth of Philee ; and it is only by help of some 
such assumption that one can understand how a new site 
should have suddenly arisen to such a height of holiness. 
The earliest Temple here, of which only a small propylon 
remains, Avould seem to have been built by the last of the 
native Pharaohs (Nectanebo II, B.C. 361) ; but the high and 
palmy days of Philse belong to the period of Greek and 
Roman rule. It was in the time of the Ptolemies that the 
Holy Island became the seat of a Sacred College and the 
stronghold of a powerful hierarchy. Visitors from all parts 
of Egypt, travellers from distant lands, court functionaries 
from Alexandria charged with royal gifts, came annually in 
crowds to offer their vows at the tomb of the God. They 
have cut their names by hundreds all over the principal 
Temple, just like tourists of to-day. Some of these antique 
autographs are written upon and across those of preceding 
visitors ; while others — palimpsests upon stone, so to say — 
having been scratched on the yet unsculptured surface of 
doorway and pylon, are seen to be older than the hieroglyphic 
texts which were afterwards carved over them. These in- 
scriptions cover a period of several centuries, during which 
time successive Ptolemies and Csesars continued to endow 
the island. Rich in lands, in temples, in the localisation of 
a great national myth, the Sacred College was yet strong 
enough in a.d. 379 to oppose a practical resistance to the 
Edict of Theodosius. At a word from Constantinople, the 
whole land of Egypt v/as forcibly Christianised. Priests 
were forbidden under pain of death to perform the sacred 
rites. Hundreds of temples were plundered. Forty thou- 
sand statues of divinities were destroyed at one fell swoop. 
Meanwhile, the brotherhood of Philae, entrenched behind the 
Cataract and the desert, survived the degradation of their 
order and ruin of their immemorial faith. It is not known 
with certainty for how long they continued to transmit their 
hereditary privileges ; but two of the above-mentioned votive 
inscriptions show that so late as a.d. 453 tlie priestly families 
were still in occupation of the island, and still celebrating the 
mj^steries of Osiris and Isis. There even seems reason for be- 
lieving that the ancient worship continued to hold its own till 
the end of the sixth century, at which time, according to an 
inscription at Kalabsheli, of which I shallhave more to say 



214 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

hereafter, Silco, " King of all the Ethiopians," himself ap- 
parently a Christian, twice invaded Lower Nubia, where God, 
he says, gave him the victory, and the vanquished swore to 
him " by their idols " to observe the terms of peace. ■"■ 

There is nothing in this record to sliow tliat the invaders 
went beyond Tafa, the ancient Taphis, which is twenty-seven 
miles above Philae ; but it seems reasonable to conclude that 
so long as the old gods yet reigned in any part of Nubia, 
the island sacred to Osiris would maintain its traditional 
sanctity. 

At length, however, there must have come a day when for 
the last time the tomb of the God was crowned with flowers, 
and the "Lamentations of Isis " were recited on the thresh- 
old of the sanctuary. And there must have come another 
day Avlien the cross was carried in triumph up those painted 
colonnades, and the first Christian mass was chanted in the 
precincts of the heathen. One would like to know how these 
changes were brought about ; whether the old faith died out 
for want of worshippers, or was expelled with clamour and 
violence. But upon this point, history is vague ^ and the 
graffiti of the time are silent. We only know for certain 
that the old went out, and the new came in ; and that where 
the resurrected Osiris was wont to be worshipped according 
to the most sacred mysteries of the Egyptian ritual, the res- 
urrected Christ was now adored after the simple fashion of 
the primitive Coptic Church, 

And now the Holy Island, near which it was believed no 
fish had power to swim or bird to fly, and upon whose soil 

1 In the time of Strabo, the island of Pliilse, as has been recently shown 
by Professor Revillout in his Seconde 3/emoi7'e «?/?• les Blemmys, was the 
common property of the Egyptians and Nubians, or rather of that obscure 
nation called the Blemmys, who, with the Nobades and Megabares, were 
collectively classed at that time as " Ethiopians." The Blemmys (ances- 
tors of the present Barabras) were a stalwart and valiant race, powerful 
enough to treat on equal terms with the Roman rulers of Egypt. Tliey were 
devout adorers of Isis, and it is interesting to learn that in the treaty of 
Maximin with this nation, it is expressly provided that, " according to the 
old law," the Blemmys were entitled to take the statue of Isis every year 
from the sanctuary of Philse to their own country for a visit of a stated 
period. A grafifito at Philfe, published by Letronne, states that the writer 
was at Philse when the image of the goddess was brought back from one of 
these perioJical excursions, and that he beheld the arrival of the sacred 
boats " containing the shrines of the divine statues." From this it would 
appear that other iniages than that of Isis had been taken to Ethiopia ; 
probably those of Osiris and Horus, an 1 possibly also that of Hathor, the 
divine nurse. [Note to Second Edition.] 

2 The Emperor Justinian is credited with the mutilation of the sculptures 
of the large Temple; but the ancient woiship was probably only tempora- 
rily suspended in his time. 



PHIL^. 215 

no pilgrim might set foot without permission, became all at 
once the common property of a populous community. Courts, 
colonnades, even terraced roofs, were overrun with little 
crude-brick dwellings. A small basilica was built at the 
lower end of the island. The portico of the Great Temple 
was converted into a Chapel, and dedicated to Saint Stephen. 
"This good work," says a Greek inscription traced there by 
some monkish hand of the period, " was done by the well- 
beloved of God, the Abbot-Bishop Theodore." Of this same 
Theodore, whom another inscription styles '"'the very holy 
father," we know nothing but his name. 

The walls hereabout are full of these fugitive records. 
" The cross has conquered, and will ever conquer," Avrites 
one anonymous scribe. Others have left simple signatures ; 
as, for instance — "I, Joseph," in one place, and "1, Theodo- 
sius of ISTtibia," in another. Here and there an added word 
or two give a more human interest to the autograph. So, in 
the pathetic scrawl of one who writes himself "Johannes, a 
slave," we seem to read the story of a life in a single line. 
These Coptic signatures are all followed by the sign of the 
cross. 

The foundations of the little basilica, with its apse towards 
the east and its two doorways to the west, are still traceable. 
We set a couple of our sailors one day to clear away the 
rubbish at the lower end of the nave, and found the font — 
a rough stone basin at the foot of a broken column. 

It is not difficult to guess what Philge must have been like 
in the days of Abbot Theodore and his flock. The little 
basilica, we may be sure, had a cluster of mud domes upon 
the roof; and I fancy, somehow^ that the Abbot and his 
monks installed themselves in that row of cells on the east 
side of the great colonnade, where the priests of Isis dwelt 
before them. As for the village, it must have been just like 
Luxor — swarming with dusky life; noisy with the babble of 
children, the cackling of poultry, and the barking of dogs; 
sending up thin pillars of blue smoke at noon ; echoing to the 
measured chime of the prayer-bell at morn and even ; and 
sleei)ii:ig at night as soundly as if no ghost-like, mutilated 
Gods were looking on mournfully in the moonlight. 

The Gods are avenged now. The creed which dethroned 
them is dethroned. Abbot Theodore and his successors, and 
the religion they taught, and the simple folk that listened to 
their teaching, are gone and forgotten. For the Church of 
Christ, which still languishes in Egypt, is extinct in Nubia. 



2iG ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

It lingered long ; though doubtless in some such degraded 
and barbaric form as it wears in Abyssinia to this day. But 
it was absorbed by Islamism at last ; and only a ruined con- 
vent perched here and there upon some solitary height, or 
a few crosses rudely carved on the walls of a Ptolemaic 
Temple, remain to show that Christianity once passed that 
way. 

The mediaeval history of Philee is almost a blank. The 
Arabs, having invaded Egypt towards the middle of the 
seventh century, were long in the land before they began to 
cultivate literature ; and for more than three hundred years 
history is silent. It is not till the tenth century that we 
once again catch a fleeting glimpse of Philae. The frontier 
is now removed to the head of the Cataract. The Holy 
Island has ceased to be Christian ; ceased to be Nubian ; 
contains a mosque and garrison, and is the last fortified out- 
post of the Moslems. It still retains, and apparently contin- 
ues to retain for some centuries longer, its ancient Egyptian 
name. That is to say (P being as usual converted into B) 
the Pilak of the hieroglyphic inscriptions becomes in Arabic 
Belak ; ^ which is much more like the original than the 
Philse of the Greeks. 

The native Christians, meanwhile, would seem to have 
relapsed into a state of semi-barbarism. They make perpet- 
ual inroads upon the Arab frontier, and suffer perpetual 
defeat. Battles are fought ; tribute is exacted; treaties are 
made and broken. Towards the close of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, their king being slain and their churches plundered, 
they lose one-fourth of their territory, including all that part 
which borders upon Assuan. Those who remain Christians 
are also condemned to pay an annual capitation tax, in addi- 
tion to the usual tribute of dates, cotton, slaves, and camels. 
After this we may conclude that they accepted Islamism 
from the Arabs, as they had accepted Osiris from the Egyp- 
tians and Christ from the Romans. As Christians, at all 
events, we hear of them no more ; for Christianity in Nubia 

' These and the following particulars about the Christians of Nubia are 
found in the famous work of Malsrizi, an Arab historian of the fifteentli 
century, who quotes largely from earlier writers. See Burckhardt's Travels 
in Nubia, 4to, 1819, Appendix iii. Although Belak is distinctly described 
as an island in the neighbourhood of the Cataract, distant four miles from 
Assuan, Burckhardt persisted in looking for it among the islets below 
Mahatta, and believed Pliilse to be the first Nubian town beyond the fron- 
tier. The hieroglyphic alphabet, however, had not then been deciphered, 
Burckhardt died at Cairo in 1817, and Champollion's discovery was not 
given to the world till 1822, 



PHIL^. 217 

perished root and branch, and not a Copt, it is said, may now 
be found above the frontier. 

Philee was still inhabited in a.d. 1799, when a detach- 
ment of Desaix's army under General Beliard took posses- 
sion of the island, and left an inscription ^ on the soffit of the 
doorway of the great pylon to commemorate the passage of 
the Cataract. Denon, describing the scene with his usual 
vivacity, relates how the natives first defied and then fled 
from the French ; flinging themselves into the river, drown- 
ing such of their children as were too yoiuig to swim, and 
escaping into the desert. They appear at this time to have 
been mere savages — the women ugly and sullen; the men 
naked, agile, quarrelsome, and armed not only with swords 
and spears, but with matchlock guns, which they used to 
keep up " a brisk and well-directed fire." 

Their abandonment of the island probably dates from this 
time ; for when Burckhardt went up in a.d. 1813, he found 
it, as we found it to this day, deserted and solitary. One 
poor old man — if indeed he still lives — is now the one 
inhabitant of Philee ; and I suspect he only crosses over 
from Biggeh in the tourist-season. He calls himself, with 
or without authority, the guardian of the island ; sleeps in 
a nest of rags and straw in a sheltered corner behind the 
great Temple ; and is so wonderfully wizened and bent and 
knotted up, that nothing of him seems quite alive except his 
eyes. We gave him fifty copper paras - for a parting present 
when on our way back to Egypt ; and he was so oppressed 
by the consciousness of wealth, that he immediately buried 
his treasure and implored us to tell no one what we had 
given him. 

With the French siege and the flight of the native popula- 
tion closes the last chapter of the local history of Philse. The 
Holy Island has done henceforth with wars of creeds or 
kings. It disappears from the domain of history, and enters 
the domain of science. To have contributed to the discovery 
of the hieroglyphic alphabet is a high distinction ; and in no 
sketch of Philee, however slight, should the obelisk^ that 

1 This inscription, which M. About considers the most interesting thing 
in Philae, runs as follows: " L'An VI de la Republique, le 15 Messidor, une 
Armee Francjaise commandee par Bonaparte est descendue a Alexandrie. 
L'Armee ayant mis, vingt jours apres, les Mamelouks en fuite aux Pyra- 
mides, Desaix, commandant la premiere division, les a poursuivis au dela 
des Cataractes, ou il est arrive' le 18 Ventose de I'an VII." 

■^ About two-and-sixpence English. 

« See pievious note, p. 205. 



218 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

furnished Champollion with the name of Cleopatra be allowed 
to pass unnoticed. This monument, second only to the 
Rosetta Stone in point of philological interest, was carried 
off by Mr, W. Bankes, the discoverer of the hrst Tablet of 
Abydos, and is now in Dorsetshire. Its empty socket and 
its fellow obelisk, mutilated and solitary, remain in situ at 
the southern extremity of the island. 

And now — for we have lingered over long in the portico 
— it is time we glanced at the interior of the Temple. So 
we go in at the central door, beyond which open some nine 
or ten halls and side-chambers leading, as usual, to the 
sanctuary. Here all is dark, earthy, oppressive. In rooms 
unlighted by the faintest gleam from without, we find smoke- 
blackened walls covered with elaborate bas-reliefs. Myste- 
rious passages, pitch-dark, thread the thickness of the walls 
and communicate by means of trap-like openings with vaults 
below. In the sanctuary lies an overthrown altar ; while in 
the corner behind it stands the very niche in which Strabo 
must have seen that poor sacred hawk of Ethiopia which he 
describes as "sick, and nearly dead." 

But in this Temple dedicated not only to Isis, but to the 
memory of Osiris and the worship of Horus their son, there 
is one chamber which we may be quite sure was shown neither 
to Strabo nor Diodorus, nor to any stranger of alien faith, be 
his repute or station what it might ; a chamber holy above 
all others ; holier even than the sanctuary; — the chamber 
sacred to Osiris. We, however, unrestricted, unforbidden, 
are free to go where we list ; and our books tell us that this 
mysterious chamber is somewhere overhead. So, emerging 
once again into the daylight, we go up a well-worn staircase 
leading out upon the roof. 

This roof is an intricate, up-and-down place ; and the room 
is not easy to find. It lies at the bottom of a little flight of 
steps — a small stone cell some twelve feet square, lighted 
only from the doorway. The walls are covered with sculp- 
tures representing the shrines, the mummification, and the 
resurrection of Osiris.^ These shrines, containing each some 

1 The story of Osiris — the beneficent God, the friend of man, slain and 
dismembered by Typhon; buried in a score of graves; sought by Isis; 
recovered limb by limb ; resuscitated in the flesh ; transferred from earth 
to reign over the dead in the world of Shades — is one of the most complex 
of Egyptian legends. Osiris under some aspects is the Nile. He personi- 
fies Abstract Good, and is entitled Unnefer, or "The Good Being." He 
appears as a Myth of the Solar Year. He bears a notable likeness to Pro- 
metheus, and to the Indian Bacchus. 

" Osiris, dit-on, etait autrefois descendu sur la terra. Etre bon par excel- 



FBILyE. 



219 



part of his body, are variously fashioned. His head, for 
instance, rests on a Nilometer ; his arm, surmounted by a 




^^ 





head, is sculptured on a stela, in shape resembling a high- 
shouldered bottle, surmounted by one of the head-dresses 

lence, il avait adouci les moeurs des hommes par la persuasion et la bienfal- 
sance. Mais il avait succombe sous les embuches de Typhon, son frere, le 
genie du mal, et pendant que ses deux soeurs, Isis et Nephthys, recueillaient 
son corps qui avait ete jete dans le fleuve, le dieu ressuscitait d'entre les 
morts et apparaissait a son fils Horus, qu'il instituait son vengeur. C'est 
ce sacrifice qu'il avait autrefois accompli en faveur des hommes qu'Osiris 
renouvelle ici en faveur de I'ame degagee de ses liens terrestres. Non 
seulement il devient son guide, mais il s'ideiitifie a elle; il I'absorbe en son 
propre sein. C'est lui alors qui, devenu le defunt luimeme, se soumet a 
toutes les epreuves que celui-ci doit subir avant d'etre proclame juste ; c'est 
lui qui, a chaque ame qu'il doit sauver, flechit les gardiens des demeures 
infernales et combat les monstres compagnons de la nuit et de la mort ; 
c'est lui enfinqui, vainqueurdestenebres, avecl'assistance d'Horus, s'assied 
pu tribunal de la supreme justice et ouvre a I'ame declaree pure les portes 
du sejour eternel. L'image de la mort aura ete empruntee au soleil qui 
disparait a I'horizon du soir : le soleil resplendissant du matin sera la symbole 
do cette seconde naissance a une vie qui, cette fois, ne connaitra pas la 
mort. 

" Osiris est done le principe du bien. . . . Charge de sauver les ames de 
la mort definitive, il est I'intermediaire entre I'homme et Dieu ; il est le 
type et le sauveur de I'homme." Notice des Monuments a Boulaq — Aug. 
Mariette Bey, 1872, pp. 105 et seq. 

[It has always been taken for granted by Egyptologists that Osiris was 
originally a local God of Abydos, and that Abydos was the cradle of the 
Osirian Myth. Professor Macpero, however, in some of his recent lectures 



220 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

peculiar to the God ; his legs and feet lie at full length in a 




pylon-shaped mausoleum. Upon another shrine stands the 

at the College de France, has shown that the Osirian cult took its rise in 
the Delta; and, in point of fact, Osiris, in certain ancient inscriptions, is 
styled the King Osiris " Lord of Tattu " (Busiris), and has his name enclosed 
in a royal oval. Up to the time of the Graeco-Roman rule, the only two 
cities of Egypt in which Osiris reigned as the principal God were Busiris 
and Mendes. 

" Le centre terrestre du culte d'Osiris, etait dans les cantons nord-est du 
Delta, situes entre la branche Sebennytique et la branche Pelusiaque, 
comme le centre terrestre du culte de Sit, le frere et le meurtrier d'Osiris : 
les deux dieux etaient limitrophes I'un de I'autre, et des rivalites de voi- 
sinage expliquent peut-etre en partie leurs querelles. . . . Tous les traits de 
la tradition Osirienne ne sont pas egalement anciens: le fond me parait etre 
d'une antiquite incontestable. Osiris y reunit les caracteres des deux divi- 
nites qui se partageaient chaque nome : il est le dieu des vivants et le dieu 
des morts en meme temps ; le dieu qui nourrit et le dieu qui detruit. Pro- 
bablement, les temps oil, saisi de pitie pour les mortels, il leur ouvrit 
I'acces de son royaume, avaient ete precedes d'autres temps oil il etait 
impitoyable et ne songeait qu'a les aneantir. Je crois trouver un souvenir 
de ce role destructeur d'Osiris dans plusieurs passages des textes des Pyra- 
mides, oil Ton promet au mort que Harkhouti viendra vers lui, 'deliant ses 
liens, brisant ses chaines pour le delivrer de la mine; il ne le livrera pas a 
Osiris, si bien qii'il ne mourra pas, jnais il sera glorieux dans I'horizon, 
solide comme le Did dans la ville de Didou.' L'Osiris farouche et cruel fut 
absorbe promptement par I'Osiris doux et bienveillant. L'Osiris qui domine 
tpute la religion egyptienne dhs le de'but, c'est I'Osiris Onnofris, I'Osiris 
Etre bon, que les Grecs ont connu. Commes ses parents, Sibou et Nouit, 
Osiris Onnofris appartient a la classe des dieux generaux qui ne sont pas 
confines en un seul canton, mais qui sont adores par un pays entier." See 
Les Hypoge'es Roi/avx de Thebes (Bulletin critique de la religion egyptienne) 
par Prof esseur G. Maspero — Revue de I'histoire des Religions, 1888. Nofcj 
to Second Edition.] 

" The astronomical and physical elements are too obvious to be mistaken. 
Osiris and Isis are the Nile and Egypt. The myth of Osiris typifies the 
solar year — the power of Osiris is the sun in the lower hemisphere, the 
winter solstice. The birth of Horus typifies the vernal equinox — the victory 
of Horus, the summer solstice — the inundation of the Nile. Typhon is 
the autumnal equinox." Egypt's Place in Universal History — Bunsen, 
1st ed. vol. i. p. 437. 

" The Egyptians do not all worshp the same gods, excepting Isis and 
Osiris." — Herodotuf, Book ii. 



PHILM. 



221 



mitre-shaped crown which he wears as Judge of the Lower 
World. Isis and Nephthys keep guard over each shrine. In 
a lower frieze we see the mummy of the god laid upon a bier, 
with the four so-called canopic jars^ ranged underneath. A 
little farther on, he lies in state, surrounded by lotus buds 
on tall stems, figurative of growth, or returning life.^ Finally, 




— ^k' 



RESURRECTION OF OSIRIS. 



he is depicted lying on a couch ; his limbs reunited ; his 
head, left hand, and left foot upraised, as in the act of return- 
ing to consciousness. Nephthys, in the guise of a winged 
genius, fans him with the breath of life. Isis with out- 
stretched arms, stands at his feet and seems to be calling 
him back to her embraces. The scene represents, in fact, 
that supreme moment when Isis pours forth her passionate 
invocations, and Osiris is resuscitated by virtue of the songs 
of the divine sisters.'^ 

Ill-modelled and ill-cut as they are, there is a clownish nat- 
uralness about these little sculptures which lifts them above 
the conventional dead level of ordinary Ptolemaic work. 

1 " These vases, made of alabaster, calcareous stone, porcelain, terra-cotta, 
and even wood, were destined to hold the soit parts or viscera of the body, 
embalmed separately and deposited in them. They were four in number, 
and were made in the shape of the four genii of the Karneter, or Hades, 
to whom were assigned the four cardinal points of the compass." Birch's 
Gxiide to the First and Second Egyptian Booms, 1874, p. 89. See also Birch's 
History of Ancient Patter?/, 1873,' p. 2.'> et seq. 

2 Thus depicted, he is called " the germinating Osiris." [Note to Second 
Edition.] 

* See M. P. J. de Horrack's translation of The Lamentations of Isis and 
Nephthys. Records of the Past, vol. ii. p. 117 et seq. 



222 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The figures tell their tale intelligibly. Osiris seems really 
straggling to rise, and the action of Isis expresses clearly 
enough the intention of the artist. Although a few heads 
have been mutilated and the surface of the stone is some- 
what degraded, the subjects are by no means in a bad state 
of preservation. In the accompanying sketches, nothing has 
been done to improve the defective drawing or repair the 
broken outlines of the originals. Osiris in one has lost his 
foot, and in another his face ; the hands of Isis are as shape- 
less as those of a bran doll ; and the naivete of the treatment 
verges throughout upon caricature. But the interest attach- 
ing to tliem is altogether apart from the way in which they 
are executed. 

And now, returning to the roof, it is pleasant to breathe 
the fresher air that comes with sunset — to seethe island, 
in shape like an ancient Egyptian shield, lying mapped out 
beneath one's feet. From here, we look back upon the way 
we have come, and forward to the way we are going. North- 
ward lies the Cataract — a network of islets with flashes of 
river between. Southward, the broad current comes on in 
one smooth, glassy sheet, unbroken by a single rapid. How 
eagerly we turn our eyes that way ; for yonder lie Abou 
Simbel and all the mysterious lands beyond the Cataracts ! 
But we cannot see far, for the river curves away gi-andly to 
the right, and vanishes behind a range of granite hills. A 
similar chain hems in the opposite bank ; while high above 
the palm-groves fringing the edge of the shore stand two 
ruined convents on two rocky prominences, like a couple of 
castles on the Rhine. On the east bank opposite, a few mud 
houses and a group of superb carob trees mark the site of a 
village, the greater part of which lies hidden among palms. 
Behind this village opens a vast sand valley, like an arm of 
the sea from which the waters have retreated. The old chan- 
nel along which we rode the other day went ploughing that 
way straight across from Philse. Last of all, forjning the 
Avestern side of this fourfold view, we have the island of Big- 
geh — rugged, mountainous, and divided from Philae by so 
narrow a channel that every sound from the native village on 
the opposite steep is as audible as though it came from the 
courtyard at our feet. That village is built in and about the 
ruins of a tiny Ptolemaic Temple, of which only a screen and 
doorway and part of a small propylon remain. We can see a 
woman pounding coffee on the threshold of one of the huts, 
and some children scrambling about the rocks in pursuit of a 



PHILM. 



223 



wandering turkey. Catching sight of us up here on the roof 
of the temple, they come whooping and scampering down to 
the water-side, and with shrill cries importune us for bakh- 
shish. Unless the stream is wider than it looks, one might 
almost pitch a piastre into their outstretched hands. 

Mr. Hay, it is said, discovered a secret passage of solid 
masonry tunnelled under the river from island to island. 
The entrance on this side was from a shaft in the Temple of 
Isis.' We are not told how far Mr. Hay was able to pene- 
trate in the direction of Biggeh ; but the passage would lead 
up, most probably, to the little Temple opposite. 




INSClilBKn MONOLITHIC ROCK, VHlh.V,. 

Perhaps the most entirely curious and unaccustomed fea- 
tures in all this scene are the mountains. They are like none 
that any of us have seen in our diverse wanderings. Other 
mountains are homogeneous, and thrust themselves up from 
below in masses suggestive of primitive disruption and up- 
heaval. These seem to lie upon the surface foundationless ; 
rock loosely piled on rock, boulder on boulder ; like stupen- 
dous cairns, the work of demigods and giants. Here and 
there, on shelf or summit, a huge rounded mass, many tons 
in weight, hangs poised capriciously. Most of these blocks, 
1 am persuaded, would " log," if put to the test. 

' Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Ghize/i — Col. HowAitD 
Vyse, London, 1840, vol. i. p. 63. 



224 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

But for a specimen stone, commend me to yonder amazing 
monolith down by thie water's edge opposite, near the carob 
trees and the ferry. Though but a single block of orange- 
red granite, it looks like three ; and the Arabs, seeing in it 
some fancied resemblance to an arm-chair, call it Pharaoh's 
throne. Hounded and polished by primaeval floods, and em- 
blazoned with royal cartouches of extraordinary size, it seems 
to have attracted the attention of pilgrims in all ages. Kings, 
conquerors, priests, travellers, have covered it with records 
of victories, of religious festivals, of prayers, and offerings, 
and acts of adoration. Some of these are older by a thou- 
sand years and more than the temples on the island opposite. 

Such, roughly summed wp, are tlie fourfold surroundings 
of Fhilae — the cataract, the river, the desert, the environing 
mountains. The Holy Island — beautiful, lifeless, a thing of 
the far past, with all its wealth of sculpture, painting, history, 
poetry, tradition — sleeps, or seems to sleep, in the midst. 

It is one of the world's famous landscapes, and it deserves 
its fame. Every sketcher sketches it ; every traveller de- 
scribes it. Yet it is just one of those places of which the 
objective and subjective features are so equally balanced 
that it bears putting neither into words nor colours. The 
sketcher must perforce leave out the atmosphere of associa- 
tion which informs his subject ; and the writer's description 
is at best no better than a catalogue raisonnee. 




Philae. 



PHILyE TO KOEOSKO. 225 



CHAPTER XIII. 

PHIL^ TO KOROSKO. 

Sailing gently southward — the river opening wide before 
us, Philse dwindling in the rear — we feel that we are now 
fairly over the border ; and that if Egypt was strange and 
far from home, Nubia is stranger and farther still. The 
Nile here flows deep and broad. The rocky heights that 
hem it in so close on either side are still black on the one 
hand, golden on the other. The banks are narrower than 
ever. The space in some places is little wider than a tow- 
ing-path. In others, there is barely room for a belt of date- 
palms and a slip of alluvial soil, every foot of which produces 
its precious growth of durra or barley. The steep verge 
below is green with lentils to the water's edge. As the 
river recedes, it leaves each day a margin of fresh, wet soil, 
in which the careful husbandman hastens to scratch a new 
furrow and sow another line of seeds. He cannot afford to 
let so much as an inch of that kindly mud lie idle. 

Gliding along with half-filled sail, we observe how entirely 
the population seems to be regulated by the extent of arable 
soil. Where the inundation has room to spread, villages 
come thicker; more dusky figures are seen moving to and 
fvo in the shade of the palms ; more children race along the 
banks, shrieking for bakhshish. When the shelf of soil is 
iiarrowed, on the contrary, to a mere fringe of luminous green 
dividing the rock from the river, there is a startling absence 
of everything like life. Mile after mile drags its slow 
length along, uncheered by any sign of human habitation. 
AVhen now and then a solitary native, armed with gun or 
spear, is seen striding along the edge of the desert, he only 
seems to make the general solitude more apparent. 

]\Tean while, it is not only men and women whom we miss 
— men labouring by the river-side; women with babies 
astride on their shoulders, or water-jars balanced on their 
heads — but birds, beasts, boats; everything that we have 
been used to see alons: the river. The buffaloes dozingr at 



22G ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

midday in the shallows, the camels stalking home in single 
file towards sunset, the water-fowl haunting the sandbanks, 
seem suddenly to have vanished. Even donkeys are now 
rare ; and as for horses, I do not remember to have seen one 
during the seven weeks we spent in Nubia. All night, too, 
instead of the usual chorus of dogs barking furiously from 
village to village, we hear only the long-drawn wail of an 
occasional jackal. It is not wonderful, however, that ani- 
mal life should be scarce in a district where the scant soil 
yields barely food enough for those who till it. To realise 
how very scant it is, one only needs to remember that about 
Derr, where it is at its widest, the annual deposit nowhere 
exceeds half-a-mile in breadth ; while for the most part of 
the way between Philse and Wady Halfeh — a distance of 
210 miles — it averages from six to sixty yards. 

Here, then, more than ever, one seems to see how entirely 
these lands which we call Egypt and Nubia are nothing but 
the banks of one solitary river in the midst of a world of 
desert. In Egypt, the valley is often so wide that one for- 
gets the stony waste beyond the corn-lands. But in Nubia, 
the desert is ever present. We cannot forget it, if we 
would. The barren mountains press upon our path, shower- 
ing down avalanches of granite on the one side and torrents 
of yellow sand on the other. We know that those stones 
are always falling; that those sands are always drifting; 
that the river has hard work to hold its own ; and that tlie 
desert is silently encroaching day by day. 

These golden sand-streams are the newest and most beau- 
tiful feature in the landscape. They pour down from the 
high level of the Libyan desert just as the snows of Swit- 
zerland pour down from the upper plateaux of the Alps. 
Through every ravine and gap they find a channel — here 
trickling in tiny rivulets ; flowing yonder in broad torrents 
that widen to the river. 

Becalmed a few miles above Philae, we found ourselves at 
the foot of one of these largest drifts. The M. B.'s chal- 
lenged us to climb the slope, and see the sunset from the 
desert. It was about six o'clock, and the thermometer was 
standing at 80° in the coolest corner of the large saloon. 
We ventured to suggest that the top was a long way up; 
but the M. B.'s would take no refusal. So away we went ; 
])anting, breathless, bewailing our hard fate. L. and the 
^Vriter had done some difficult walking in their time, over ice 
and snow, on lava cold and hot, up cinder-slopes and beds 



philjE to korosko. 227 

of mountain torrents ; but this innocent-looking sand-drift 
proved quite as hard to climb as any of them. The sand 
lies wonderfully loose and light, and is as hot as if it had 
been baked in an oven. Into this the foot plunges ankle- 
deep, slipping back at every step, and leaving a huge hole 
into which the sand pours down again like water. Looking 
back, you trace your course by a succession of funnel-shaped 
l)its, each larger than a wash-hand basin. Though your 
slipper be as small as Cinderella's, the next comer shall not 
be able to tell whether it was a lady who Avent up last, or a 
camel. It is toilsome work, too ; for the foot finds neither 
rest nor resistance, and the strain upon the muscles is unre- 
mitting. 

But the beauty of the sand more than repays the fatigue 
of climbing it. Smooth, sheeny, satiny ; fine as diamond- 
dust ; supple, undulating luminous, it lies in the most 
exquisite curves and wreaths like a snow-drift turned to 
gold. Remodelled by every breath that blows, its ever- 
varying surface presents an endless play of delicate lights 
and shadows. There lives not the sculptor who could ren- 
der those curves ; and I doubt whether Turner himself, in 
his tenderest and subtlest mood, could have done justice to 
those complex greys and ambers. 

Having paused to rest upon an out-cropping ledge of rock 
about half-way up, we came at length to the top of the last 
slope and found ourselves on the level of the desert. Here, 
faithful to the course of the river, the first objects to meet 
our eyes were the old familiar telegraph-posts and wires. 
Beyond them, to north and south, a crowd of peaks closed in 
the view ; but westward, a rolling waste of hillock and 
hollow opened away to where the sun, a crimson globe, had 
already half-vanished below the rim of the world. 

One could not resist going a few steps farther, just to 
touch the nearest of those telegraph posts. It was like 
reaching out a hand towards home. 

When the sun dropped, we turned back. The valley 
below was already steeped in dusk. The Nile, glimmering 
like a coiled snake in the shade, reflected the evening sky in 
three separate reaches. On the Arabian side, a far-off moun- 
tain-chain stood out, purple and jagged against the eastern 
horizon. 

To come down was easy. Driving our heels well into the 
sand, we half ran, half glissaded, and soon reached the bottom. 
Here we were met by an old Nubian woman, who had trudged 



228 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

up in all haste from the nearest village to question our sailors 
about one Yusef, her son, of whom she had heard nothing for 
nearly a year. She was a very poor old woman — a widow — 
and this Yusef was her only son. Hoping to better himself, 
he had worked his passage to Cairo in a cargo-boat some 
eighteen months ago. Twice since then he had sent her 
messages and money ; but now eleven months had gone by 
in silence, and she feared he must be dead. Meanwhile her 
date-palm, taxed to the full value of its produce, had this 
year yielded not a piastre of profit. Her mud-hut had fallen 
in, and there was no Yusef to repair it. Old and sick, she 
now could only beg ; and her neighbours, by whose charity 
she subsisted, were but a shade less poor than herself. 

Our men knew nothing of the missing Yusef. Eeis Hassan 
promised when he went back to make inquiries among the 
boatmen of Boulak : " But then," he added, " there are so 
many Yiisefs in Cairo ! " 

It made one's heart ache to see the tremulous eagerness 
with which the poor soul put her questions, and the crushed 
look in her face when she turned away. 

And now, being fortunate in respect of the wind, which 
for the most part blows steadily from the north between 
sunrise and sunset, we make good progress, and for the next 
ten days live pretty much on board our dahabeeyah. The 
main features of the landscape go on repeating themselves 
with but little variation from day to day. The mountains 
wear their habitual livery of black and gold. The river, now 
widening, now narrowing, flows between banks blossoming 
with lentils and lupins. With these, and yellow acacia-tufts, 
and blue castor-oil berries, and the weird coloquintida, with 
its downy leaf and milky juice and puff-bladder fruit, like a 
green peach tinged with purple, we make our daily bouquet 
for the dinner table. All otlier flowers have vanished, and 
even these are hard to get in a land where every green blade 
is precious to the grower. 

Now, too, the climate becomes sensibly warmer. The heat 
of the sun is so great at midday that, even with the north 
breeze blowing, we can no longer sit on deck between twelve 
and three. Towards sundown, when the wind drops, it turns 
so sultry that to take a walk on shore comes to be regarded 
as a duty rather than as a pleasure. Thanks, however, to 
that indomitable Fainter who is always ready for an after- 
noon excursion, we do sometimes walk for an hour before 
dinner; striking off generally into the desert; looking for 



PHIL.^ TO KOROSKO. 229 

onyxes and carnelians among the pebbles that here and there 
strew the surface of the sand, and watching in vain for 
jackals and desert-hares. 

Sometimes we follow the banks instead of the desert, 
coming now and then to a creaking Sakkieh turned by a 
melancholy buffalo ; or to a native village hidden behind 
dwarf-palms. Here each hut has its tiny forecourt, in the 
midst of which stand the mud-oven and mud-cupboard of the 
family — two dumpy cones of smooth grey clay, like big 
chimney-pots — the one capped with a lid, the other fitted 
with a little wooden door and wooden bolt. Some of the 
houses have a barbaric ornament palmed off, so to say, upon 
the walls ; the pattern being simply the impression of a human 
hand dipped in red or yellow ochre, and applied while the 
surface is moist. 

The amount of " bazaar " that takes place whenever we 
enter one of these villages, is quite alarming. The dogs first 
give notice of our approach ; and presently we are surrounded 
by all the women and girls of the place, offering live pigeons, 
eggs, vegetable marrows, necklaces, nose-rings and silver 
bracelets for sale. The boys pester us to buy wretched half- 
dead chameleons. The men stand aloof, and leave the bar- 
gaining to the women. 

And the women not only know how to bargain, but how 
to assess the relative value of every coin that passes current 
on the Nile. Rupees, roubles, reyals, dollars and shillings 
are as intelligible to them as paras or piastres. Sovereigns 
are not too heavy nor napoleons too light for them. The" 
times are changed since Belzoni's Nubian, after staring con- 
temptuously at the first piece of money he had ever seen, 
asked "Who would give anything for that small piece of 
metal?" 

The necklaces consist of onyx, carnelian, bone, silver, and 
coloured glass beads, with now and then a stray scarab or 
amulet in the ancient blue porcelain. The arrangement of 
colour is often very subtle. The brow-pendants in gold 
repoussee, and the massive old silver bracelets, rough with 
knobs and bosses, are most interesting in design, and perpet- 
uate patterns of undoubted antiquity. The M. B.'s picked 
up one really beautiful collarette of silver and coral, which 
might have been worn three thousand years ago by Pharaoh's 
daughter. 

When on board, we begin now to keep a sharp look-out for 
crocodiles. We hear of them constantly — see their tracks 



230 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

upon the sand-banks in the river — go through agonies of 
expectation over every black speck in the distance ; yet are 
perpetually disappointed. The farther south we go, the more 
impatient we become. The E.'s, whose dahabeeyah, liome- 
ward-bound, drifts slowly past one calm morning, report 
'' eleven beauties," seen all together yesterday upon a sand 
island, some ten miles higher up. Mr. C. B.'s boat, garlanded 
with crocodiles from stem to stern, fills us with envy. We 
would give our ears (almost) to see one of these engaging 
reptiles dangling from either our own mainmast, or that of 
the faithful Bagstones. Alfred, who has set his heart on 
bagging at least half-a-dozen, says nothing, but grows gloomier 
day by day. At night, when the moon is up and less misan- 
thropic folk are in bed and asleep, he rambles moodily into 
the desert, after jackals. 

Meanwhile, on we go, starting at sunrise ; mooring at sun- 
set ; sailing, tracking, punting; never stopping for an hour 
by da)", if we can help it ; and pushing straight for Abou 
Simbel with as little delay as possible. Thus we pass the 
P3']ons of Dabod with their background of desert ; Gertassee, 
a miniature Sunium, seen towards evening against the glow- 
ing sunset ; Tafah, rich in palms, with white columns gleaming 
through green foliage by the water-side ; the cliffs, islands, 
and rapids of Kalabsheh, and the huge Temple which rises 
like a fortress in their midst ; Dendur, a tiny chapel with a 
single pylon ; and Gerf Hossayn, which from this distance 
might be taken for the mouth of a rock-cut tomb in the face 
of the precipice. 

About half way between Kalabsheh and Dendur, we enter 
the Tropic of Cancer. From this day till the day when we 
repass that invisible boundary, there is a marked change in 
the atmospheric conditions under which we live. The days 
get gradually hotter, especially at noon, when the sun is 
almost vertical; but the freshness of niglit and the chill of 
early morning are no more. Unless when a strong wind 
blows from the north, we no longer know what it is to need 
a shawl on deck in the evening, or an extra covering on our 
beds towards dawn. We sleep with our cabin windows open, 
and enjoy a delicious equality of temperature from sundown 
to sunrise. The days and nights, too, are of almost equal 
length. 

Now, also, the Southern Cross and a second group of stars, 
which we conclude must form part of the Centaur, are visible 
between two and four every morning. They have been creep- 




Tempi£ nrDAKKEH, 



PHIL^ TO KOROSKO. 



231 



ing up, a star at a time, for the last fortnight ; but are still 
so low upon the eastern horizon that we can only see them 
when there comes a break in the mountain-chain on that side 
of the river. At the same time, our old familiar friends of 
the northern hemisphere, looking strangely distorted and out 
of their proper place, are fast disappearing on the opposite 
side of the heavens. Orion seems to be lying on his back, 
and the Great Bear to be standing on his tail ; while Cassi- 
opeia and a number of others have deserted en masse. The 
zenith, meanwhile, is but thinly furnished ; so that we seem 
to have travelled away from the one hemisphere, and not yet 
to have reached the other. As for the Southern Cross, we 
reserve our opinion till we get farther south. It would be 
treason to hint that we are disappointed in so famous a 
constellation. 




TEMPLK OF DAKKEH, MUBIA. 



After Gerf Hossayn, the next place of importance for 
which our maps bid us look out is Dakkeh. As we draw 
near, expecting hourly to see something of the Temple, the 
Nile increases in breadth and beauty. It is a peaceful, 
glassy morning. The men have been tracking since dawn, 
and stop to breakfast at the foot of a sandy bank, wooded 
with tamarisks and gum-trees. A glistening network of 
gossamer floats from bough to bough. The sky overhead is 
of a tender luminous blue, such as we never see in Europe. 
The air is wonderfully still. The river, which here takes a 
sudden bend towards the east, looks like a lake, and seems 
to be barred ahead by the desert. Presently a funeral passes 
along the opposite bank ; the chief mourner flourishing a long 



232 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

staff, like a drum-major; the women snatching up handfuls 
of dust, and scattering it upon their heads. We hear their 
wild wail long after the procession is out of sight. 

Going on again presently, our whole attention becomes 
absorbed by the new and singular geological features of the 
Libyan desert. A vast plain covered with isolated mountains 
of volcanic structure, it looks like some strange transformation 
of the Puy de Dome plateau, Avith all its wind-swept pastures 
turned to sand, and its grassy craters stripped to barrenness. 
The more this plain widens out before our eyes, the more it 
bristles with peaks. As we round the corner, and Dakkeh, 
like a smaller Edfu, comes into sight upon the western bank, 
the whole desert on that side, as far as the eye can see, 
presents the unmistakable aspect of one vast field of volca- 
noes. As in Auvergne, these cones are of all sizes and 
heights ; some low and rounded, like mere bubbles that have 
cooled without bursting; others ranging apparently from 
1000 to 1500 feet in height. The broken craters of several 
are plainly distinguishable by the help of a field-glass. One 
in particular is so like our old friend the Puy de Pariou, 
that in a mere black-and-white sketch, the one might readily 
be mistaken for the other. 

We were surprised to find no account of the geology of 
this district in any of our books. Murray and Wilkinson 
pass it in silence ; and writers of travels — one or two of 
whom notice only the " pyramidal " shape of the hills — are 
for the most part content to do likewise. None seem to 
have observed their obvious volcanic origin. 

Thanks to a light breeze that sprang up in the afternoon, 
we were able to hoist our big sail again, and to relieve the 
men from tracking. Thus we glided past the ruins of Ma- 
harrakeh, which, seen from the river, looked like a Greek 
portico set in a hollow waste of burning desert. Next came 
Wady Sabooah, a temple half buried in sand, near which we 
met a tiny dahabeeyah, manned by two Nubians and flying 
the star and crescent. A shabby Government Inspector, in 
European dress and a fez, lay smoking on a mat outside his 
cabin door; while from a spar overhead there hung a mighty 
crocodile. This monster was of a greenish brown color, and 
measured at least sixteen feet from head to tail. His jaws 
yawned ; and one flat and flabby arm and ponderous paw 
swung with the motion of the boat, looking horribly human. 

The Painter, with an eye to foregrounds, made a bid for 
him on the spot ; but the shabby Inspector was not to be 



PIIIL^ TO EOBOSKO. 



233 



moved by considerations of gain. He preferred his crocodile 
to infidel gold, and scarcely deigned even to reply to the 
offer. 

Seen in the half-light of a tropical afterglow — the purple 
mountains coming down in detached masses to the water's 
edge on the one side ; the 

desert with its volcanic peaks / , ;""^-. - 

yet rosy upon the other — 
we thought the approach to 
Korosko more picturesque 
than anything we had yet 
seen south of the Cataract. 
As the dusk deepened, the 
moon rose ; and the palms 
that had just room to grow 
between the mountains and 
the river turned from bronze 
to silver. It was half twi- 
light, half-moonlight, by the 
time we reached the moor- 
ing-place, where Talhamy, 
who had been sent forward in 
the small boat half an hour ago, jumped on board laden with a 
packet of letters, and a sheaf of newspapers. For here, where 
the great caravan-route leads off across the desert to Khartum, 
we touched the first Nubian post-office. It was only ten days 
since we had received our last budget at Assuan ; but it 
seemed like ten weeks. 




NUBIAN JEWELLERY'. 



234 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 

It so happened that we arrived at Korosko on the eve of 
El-'Id el-Kebir, or the anniversary of the Sacrifice of Abra- 
ham; wlien, according to the Moslem version, Ishmael was 
the intended victim, and a ram the substituted offering. 
Now El-" Id el-Kebir, being one of the great Feasts of the 
Mohammedan Kalendar, is a day of gifts and good wishes. 
The rich visit their friends and distribute meat to the poor ; 
and every true believer goes to tha mosque to say his prayers 
in the morning. So, instead of starting as usual at sunrise, 
we treated our sailors to a sheep, and waited till past noon, 
that they might make holiday. 

They began the day by trooping off to the village mosque 
in all the glory of new blue blouses, spotless turbans, and 
scarlet leather slippers ; then loitered about till dinner-time, 
when the said sheep, stewed with lentils and garlic, brought 
the festivities to an end. It was a thin and ancient beast, 
and must have been horribly tough ; but an epicure might 
have envied the child-like enjoyment with which our honest 
fellows squatted, cross-legged and happy, round the smoking 
cauldron ; chattering, laugliing, feasting ; dipping their fingers 
in the common mess ; washing the whole down with long 
draughts of Nile water; and finishing off with a hubble- 
bubble passed from lip to lip, and a mouthful of muddy 
coffee. By a little after midday they had put off their finery, 
harnessed themselves to the tow-rope, and set to work to 
haul us through the rocky shoals which here impede the 
current. 

From Korosko to Derr, the actual distance is about eleven 
miles and a half ; but what with obstructions in the bed of 
the river, and what with a wind that would have been fa- 
vourable but for another great bend which the Nile takes 
towards the east, those eleven miles and a half cost us the 
best part of two days' hard tracking. 



KOBOSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 235 

Landing from time to time when the boat was close in 
shore, we found the order of planting everywhere the same, 
lupins and lentils on the slope against the water-line ; an 
uninterrupted grove of palms on the edge of the bank ; in 
the space beyond, fields of cotton and young corn ; and then 
the desert. The arable soil was divided off, as usual, by 
hundreds of water channels ; and seemed to be excellently 
farmed as well as abundantly irrigated. Not a weed was to 
be seen; not an inch of soil appeared to be wasted. In odd 
corners where there was room for nothing else, cucumbers 
and vegetable-marrows flourished and bore fruit. Nowhere 
had we seen castor-berries so large, cotton-pods so full, or 
palms so lofty. 

Here also, for the first time out of Egypt, we observed 
among the bushes a few hoopoes and other small birds ; and 
on a sand-slope down by the river, a group of wild-ducks. 
We — that is to say, one of the M. B.'s and the Writer — 
had wandered off that way in search of crocodiles. The 
two dahabeeyahs, each with its file of trackers, were slowly 
labouring up against the current about a mile away. All 
was intensely hot, and intensely silent. We had walked far, 
and had seen no crocodile. What we should have done if 
we had met one, I am not prepared to say. Perhaps we 
should have run away. At all events, we were just about 
to tarn back when we caught sight of the ducks sunning 
themselves, half-asleep, on the brink of a tiny pool about an 
eighth of a mile away. 

Creeping cautiously under the bank, we contrived to get 
within a few yards of them. They were four — a drake, a 
duck, and two young ones — exquisitely feathered, and as 
small as teal. The parent-birds could scarcely have meas- 
ured more than eight inches from head to tail. All alike 
had chestnut coloured heads with a narrow buff stripe down 
the middle, like a parting; maroon backs; wing-feathers 
maroon and grey ; and tails tipped with buff. They were so 
pretty, and the little family party was so complete, that the 
Writer could not help secretly rejoicing that Alfred and his 
gun were safe on board the Bagstones. 

High above the Libyan bank on the sloping verge of the 
desert, stands, half-drowned in sand, the little Temple of 
Amada. Seeing it from the opposite side while duck-hunting 
in the morning, I had taken it for one of the many stone 
shelters erected by Mohammed Ali for the accommodation 
of cattle levied annually in the Sudan. It proved, however, 



236 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

to be a temple, small but massive ; built with squared blocks 
of sandstone ; and dating back to the very old times of the 
Usurtesens and Thothmes. It consists of a portico, a trans- 
verse atrium, and three small chambers. The pillars of the 
portico are mere square piers. The rooms are small and low. 
Thr roof, constructed of oblong blocks, is flat from end to 
end.' As an architectural structure it is in fact but a few 
degrees removed from Stonehenge. 

A shed without, this little temple is, however, a cameo 
within. Nowhere, save in the tomb of Ti, had we seen bas- 
reliefs so delicately modelled, so rich in colour. Here, as 
elsewhere, the walls are covered with groups of Kings and 
Gods and hieroglyphic texts. The figures are slender and 
animated. The head-dresses, jewellery, and patterned robes 
are elaborately drawn and painted. Every head looks 
like a portrait ; every hieroglyphic form is a study in minia- 
ture. 

Apart from its exquisite finish, the wall-sculpture of 
Amada has, however, nothing in common with the wall- 
sculpture of the Ancient Empire. It belongs to the period 
of Egyptiaji Renaissance ; and, though inferior in power and 
naturalness to the work of the elder school, it marks just 
that moment of special development when the art of model- 
ling in low relief had touched the highest level to which it 
ever again attained. That highest level belongs to the reigns 
of Thothmes the Secaud and Thothmes the Third ; just as 
the pefect era in architecture belongs to the reigns of Seti 
the First and Rameses the Second. It is for this reason 
that Amada is so precious. It registers an epoch in the his- 
tory of the art, and gives us the best of that epoch in the 
hour of its zenith. The sculptor is here seen to be working 
within bounds already prescribed ; yet within those bounds 
he still enjoys a certain liberty. His art, though largely 
conventionalised, is not yet stereotyped. His sense of beauty 
still finds expression. There is, in short, a grace and sweet- 
ness about the bas-relief designs of Amada for which one 
looks in vain to the storied walls of Karnak. 

The chambers are half-choked with sand, and we had to 
crawl into the sanctuary upon our hands and knees. A long 
inscription at the upper end records how Amenhotep the 
Second, returning from his first campaign against the Ruten, 
slew seven kings with his own hand ; six of whom were gib- 
beted upon the ramparts of Thebes, while the body of the 
seventh was sent to Ethiopia by water and suspended on the 



KOROSEO TO AliOU SIMBEL. 237 

outer wall of the city of Kapata,' " in order that the negroes 
might behold the victories of the Pharaoh in all the lands of 
the world." 

In the darkest corner of the atrium we observed a curious 
tableau representing the King embraced by a Goddess. He 
holds a short straight sword in his right hand, and the crux 
ansata in his left. On his head he wears the khepersh, or 
war-helmet ; a kind of a blue mitre studded with gold stars 
and ornamented with the royal asp. The Goddess clasps 
him lovingly about the neck, and bends her lips to his. The 
artist has given her the yellow complexion conventionally 
ascribed to women ; but her saucy mouth and nez retrousse 
are distinctly European. Dressed in the fashion of the nine- 
teenth century, she might have served Leech as a model for 
his Girl of the Period. 

The sand has drifted so high at the back of the Temple, 
that one steps upon the roof as upon a terrace only just 
raised above the level of the desert. Soon that level will be 
equal ; and if nothing is done to rescue it within the next 
generation or two, the whole building will become engulfed, 
and its very site be forgotten. 

The view from the roof, looking back towards Korosko 
and forward towards Derr, is one of the finest — perhaps 
quite the finest — in Nubia. The Nile curves grandly through 
the foreground. The palm-woods of Derr are green in the 
distance. The mountain region which we have just trav- 
ersed ranges, a vast crescent of multitudinous peaks, round 
two-thirds of the horizon. Ridge beyond ridge, chain beyond 
chain, flushing crimson in light and deepening through every 
tint of amethyst and purple in shadow, those innumerable 
summits fade into tenderest blue upon the horizon. As the 
sun sets, they seem to glow ; to become incandescent ; to be 
touched with flame — as in the old time when every crater 
was a fount of fire. 

Struggling next morning through a maze of sand-banks, 
we reached Derr soon after breakfast. This town — the 
Nubian capital — lies a little lower than the level of the 
bank, so that only a few mud walls are visible from the river. 
Having learned by this time that a capital town is but a big- 

1 A city of Ethiopia, identified witli the ruins at Gebel Barkal. Tiie 
worship of Amen was established at Napata towards the end of tlie XXth 
Dynasty, and it was from the priests of Thebes who settled at that time 
in Napata, that the Ethiopian conquerors of Egypt (XXIIIrd Dynasty) 
were descended. 



238 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

ger village, containing perhaps a mosque and a market-place, 
we were not disappointed by the unimposing aspect of the 
Nubian metropolis. 

Great, however, was our surprise when, instead of the 
usual clamorous crowd screaming, pushing, scrambling, and 
bothering for bakhshish, we found the landing-place de- 
serted. Two or three native boats lay up under the bank, 
empty. There was literally not a soul in sight. L. and the 
Little Lady, eager to buy some of the basket-work for which 
the place is famous, looked blank. Talhamy, anxious to lay 
in a store of fresh eggs and vegetables, looked blanker. 

We landed. Before us lay an open space, at the farther 
end of which, facing the river, stood the Governor's palace ; 
the said palace being a magnified mud hut, with a frieze of 
baked bricks round the top, and an imposing stone doorway. 
In this doorway, according to immemorial usage, the great 
man gives audience. We saw him — a mere youth, appar- 
ently — puffing away at a long chibouque, in the midst of a 
little group of greybeard elders. They looked at us gravely, 
immovably ; like smoking automata. One longed to go up 
and ask them if they were all transformed to black granite 
from the waists to the feet, and if the inhabitants of Derr 
had been changed into blue stones. 

Still bent on buying baskets, if baskets were to be bought, 
— bent also on finding out the whereabouts of a certain rock- 
cut temple which our books told us to look for at the back of 
the town, we turned aside into a straggling street leading 
towards the desert. The houses looked better built than 
usual ; some pains having evidently been bestowed in smooth- 
ing the surface of the mud, and ornamenting the doorways 
Avith fragments of coloured pottery. A cracked willow-pattern 
dinner-plate set like a fanlight over one, and a white soup-plate 
over another, came doubtless from the canteen of some English, 
dahabeeyah, and were the pride of their possessors. Looking 
from end to end of this street — and it was a tolerably long 
one, with the Nile at one end, and the desert at the other — 
"we saw no sign or shadow of nioving creature. Only one 
young woman, hearing strange voices talking a strange 
tongue, peeped out suddenly from a half-opened door as we 
went by ; then, seeing me look at the baby in her arms (which 
was hideous and had sore eyes) drew her veil across its face, 
and darted back again. She thought I coveted her treasure, 
and she dreaded the Evil Eye. 

All at once we heard a sound like the far-off quivering cry 



KOiiOSKO TO ABUU SIMBEL. 239 

of many owls. It shrilled — swelled — wavered — dropped 
— then died away, like the moaning of the wind at sea. We 
held our breath and listened. We had never heard anything 
so wild and plaintive. Tlien suddenly, through an opening 
between the houses, Ave saw a great crowd on a space of rising 
ground about a quarter of a mile away. This crowd consisted 
of men only — a close, turbaned mass some three or four 
hundred in number ; all standing quite still and silent ; all 
looking in the same direction. 

Hurrying on to the desert, we saw the strange sight at 
which they were looking. 

The scene was a barren sandslope hemmed in between the 
town and tlie cliffs, and dotted over witli graves. The actors 
were all women. Huddled together under a long wall some 
few hundred yards away, bareheaded, and exposed to the 
blaze of the morning sun, they outnumbered the men by a 
full third. Some were sitting, some standing ; while in their 
midst, pressing round a young woman who seemed to act as 
leader, there swayed and circled and shuffled a compact pha- 
lanx of dancers. Upon this young woman the eyes of all 
were turned. A black Cassandra, she rocked her body from 
side to side, clapped her hands above her head, and poured 
forth a wild declamatory chant, which the rest echoed. This 
chant seemed to be divided into stroplies, at the end of each 
of which she paused, beat her breast, and broke into that 
terrible wail that we liad heard just now from a distance. 

Her brother, it seemed, had died last niglit ; and we were 
witnessing liis funeral. 

The actual interment was over by the time we reached the 
spot ; but four men were still busy filling the grave with sand, 
which they scraped up. a bowlful at a time, and stamped 
down with their naked feet. 

The deceased being unmarried, his sister led the choir of 
mourners. She was a tall, gaunt young woman of the plain- 
est Nubian type, with high cheekbones, eyes slanting upwards 
at the corners, and an enormous mouth full of glittering teeth. 
On her head she wore a white cloth smeared with dust. Her 
companions were distinguished by a narrow white fillet, 
bound about the brow, and tied with two long ends behind. 
They had hidden their necklaces and bracelets, and wore 
trailing robes and shawls, and loose trousers of black or blue 
calico. 

We stood for a long time watching their uncouth dance. 
None of the women seemed to notice us ; but the men made 



240 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

way civilly and gravely, letting us pass to the front, that we 
might get a better view of the ceremony. 

By and by an old woman rose slowly from the midst of 
those who were sitting, and moved with tottering uncertain 
steps towards a higher point of ground, a little apart from tlie 
crowd. There was a movement of compassion among the 
men ; one of whom turned to the Writer and said geiitly : 
"His mother." 

She was a small, feeble old woman, very poorly clad. Her 
hands and arms were like the hands and arms of a mummy, 
and her withered black face looked ghastly under its mask of 
dust. For a few moments, swaying her body slowly to and 
fro, she watched the gravediggers stamping down the sand ; 
then stretched out her arms, and broke into a torrent of lam- 
entations. The dialect of Derr^ is strange and barbarous; 
but we felt as if we understood every word she uttered. 
Presently the tears began to make channels down her cheeks 
— her voice became choked with sobs — and falling down in 
a sort of helpless lieap, like a broken-hearted dog. she lay 
with her face to the ground, and there stayed. 

Meanwhile, the sand being now filled in and mounded up, 
the men betook themselves to a place where the rock had 
given way, and selected a couple of big stones from the debris. 
These they placed at the head and foot of the grave ; and all 
was done. 

Instantly — perhaps at an appointed signal, though we 
saw none given — the wailing ceased ; the women rose ; every 
tongue was loosened ; aud the whole became a moving, ani- 
mated, noisy throng dispersing in a dozen different direc- 
tions. 

We turned away with the rest, the Writer and the Painter 
rambling off in search of the temple, while the other three 
devoted themselves to the pursuit of baskets and native jew- 
ellery. When we looked back presently, the crowd was gone ; 
but the desolate mother still lay motionless in the dust. 

It chanced that we witnessed many funerals in Nubia ; so 
many that one sometimes felt inclined to doubt whether the 
Governor of Asslian had not reported over-favourably of the 
health of the province. The ceremonial, with its dancing 
and chanting, was always much the same; always barbaric, 
and in the highest degree artificial. One would like to know 

1 The men hereabout can nearly all speak Arabic; but the women of 
Nubia know only the Kensee and Berberee tongues, the first of which is 
spoken as far as Korosko. 



KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 241 

how muck of it is derived from purely African sources, and 
how much from ancient Egyptian tradition. The dance is 
most probably Ethiopian. Lepsius, travelling through the 
Sudan in a.d. 1844/ saw something of the kind at a funeral 
in Wed Medineh, about half-way between Sennaar and 
Khartum. The white fillet worn by the choir of mourners 
is, on the other hand, distinctly Egyptian. We afterv/ards 
saw it represented in paintings of funeral processions on the 
walls of several tombs at Thebes,^ where the wailing women 
are seen to be gathering up the dust in their hands and cast- 
ing it upon their heads, just as they do now. As for the 
wail — beginning high, and descending through a scale 
divided, not by semi-tones, but thirds of tones, to a fi.nal note 
about an octave and a half lower than that from which it 
started — it probably echoes to this day the very pitch and 
rhythm of the wail that followed the Pharaohs to their sepul- 
chres in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. Like the 
zaghareet, or joy-cry, which every mother teaches to her little 
girls, and which, it is said, can only be acquired in very early 
youth, it has been handed down from generation to generation 
through an untold succession of ages. The song to which 
the Fellah works his shaduf, and the monotonous chant of 
the sakkieh-driver, have perhaps as remote an origin. But 
of all old, mournful, human sounds, the death-wail that we 
heard at I)err is perhaps one of the very oldest — certainly 
the most mournful. 

The Temple here, dating from the reign of Rameses II, is 
of rude design and indifferent execution. Partly constructed, 
partly excavated, it is approached by a forecourt, the roof of 
which was supported by eight square columns. Of these 
columns only the bases remain. Four massive piers against 
which once stood four colossi, upheld the roof of the portico 
and gave admission by three entrances to the rock-cut cham- 
bers beyond. That portico is now roofless. Nothing is left 
of the colossi but their feet. All is ruin ; and ruin without 
beauty. 

Seen from within, however, the place is not without a kind 
of gloomy grandeur. Two rows of square columns, three at 
each side, divide the large hall into a nave and two aisles. 

1 Lepsius's Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, etc., Letter xviii. p. 184. 
Bohn's ed. a.d. 1853. 

^ See the interesting account of funeral rites and ceremonies in Sir G. 
Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii. ch. x., Lond. 1871. Also woodcuts 
Nos. 493 and 494 in the same chapter of the same work. 



242 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



This hall is about forty feet square, and the pillars have been 
left standing in the living rock, like those in the early tombs 
at Siut. The daylight, half blocked out by tjie fallen portico, 
is pleasantly subdued, and finds its way dimly to the sanctuary 
at the farther end. The sculptures of the interior, though 
much damaged, are less defaced than those of the outer court. 
Walls, pillars, doorways, are covered with bas-reliefs. The 
King and Ptah, the King and Ra, the King and Amen, stand 
face to face, hand in hand. On each of the four sides of every 
column. Scenes of worship, of slaughter, of anointing, cover 




TEMPLE OK DEHK, NUIJIA. 



the walls ; and the blank spaces are filled in as usual with 
hieroglyphic inscriptions. Among these Champollion dis- 
covered an imperfect list of the sons and daughters of Rameses 
the Second. Four gods once sat enthroned at the upper end 
of the sanctuary ; but they have shared the fate of the colossi 
outside, and only their feet remain. The wall sculptures of 
this dark little chamber are, however, better preserved, and 
better worth preservation, than those of the hall. A proces- 
sion of priests, bearing on their shoulders the bari, or sacred 
boat, is quite unharmed ; and even the colour is yet fresh 
■upon a full-length figure of Hathor close by. 

But more interesting than all these — more interesting be- 



KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 243 

cause more rare — is a sculptured palm-tree against which 
the king leans while making an offering to Amen-lla. The 
trunk is given with elaborate truthfulness ; and the branches, 
though formalised, are correct and graceful in curvature. 
The tree is but an accessory. It may have been introduced 
with reference to the date-harvests which are the wealth of 
the district; but it has no kind of sacred significance, and is 
noticeable only for the naturalness of the treatment. Such 
naturalness is unusual in the art of this period, when the con- 
ventional persea, and the equally conventional lotus are al- 
most the only vegetable forms which appear on the walls of 
the Temples. I can recall, indeed, but one similar instance 
in the bas-relief sculpture of the New Empire — namely, the 
bent, broken, and waving bulrushes in the great lion-hunt- 
ing scene at Medinet Habu, which are admirably free, and 
studied apparently from nature. 

Coming out, Ave looked in vain along the courtyard walls 
for the battle-scene in which Champollion was yet able to 
trace the famous fighting lion of Rameses the Second, with 
the legend describing him as "the Servant of His Majesty 
rending his foes in pieces." But that was forty-five years 
ago. Now it is with difficulty that one detects a few vague 
outlines of chariot-wheels and horses. 

There are some i*ock-cut tombs in the face of the cliffs 
close by. The Painter explored them while the Writer 
sketched the interior of the Tejuple ; but he reported of them 
as mere sepulclires, unpainted and unsculptured. 

The rocks, the sands, the sky, were at a white heat when 
we again turned our faces toward the river. Where there 
had so lately been a great multitude there was now not a 
soul. The palms nodded ; the pigeons dozed ; the mud town 
slept in the sun. Even tlie mother had gone from her place 
of weeping, and left her dead to the silence of the desert. 

We went and looked at his grave. The fresh-turned sand 
vs^as only a little darker than the rest, and but for the tram- 
pled foot-marks round about, we could scarcely have been able 
to distinguish the new mound from the old ones. All were 
alike nameless. Some, more cared for than the rest, were 
bordered with large stones and filled in with vaiiegated peb- 
bles. One or two were fenced about with a mud wall. All 
had a bowl of baked clay at the head. Wherever we saw a 
burial-ground in Nubia, we saw these bowls upon the graves. 
The mourners, they told us, moiiru here for forty days; dur- 
ing which time they come every Friday and till the bowl 



244 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

with fresh water, that the birds may drink from it. The 
bowls on the other graves were dry and full of sand ; but the 
new bowl was brimming full, and the water in it was hot to 
the touch. 

We found L. and the Happy Couple standing at bay with 
their backs against a big lebbich tree, surrounded by an im- 
mense crowd and far from comfortable. Bent on " bazaaring," 
they had probably shown themselves too ready to buy ; so 
bringing the whole population, with all tlie mats, baskets, 
nose-rings, finger-rings, necklaces, and bracelets in the place 
about their ears. Seeing the straits they Avere in, we ran to 
the dahabeeyah and despatched three or four sailors to the 
rescue, who brought them off in triumph. 

Even in Egypt, it does not answer, as a rule, to go about 
on shore without an escort. The people are apt to be im- 
portunate, and can with difficulty be kept at a pleasant dis- 
tance. But in ISTubia, where the traveller's life was scarcely 
safe fifty years ago, unprotected Ingleezeh are pretty certain 
to be disagreeably mobbed. The natives, in truth, are still 
mere savages au fond — the old war-paint being but half 
disguised under a thin veneer of Mohammedanism. 

Some of the women who followed our friends to the boat, 
though in complexion as black as the rest, had light blue eyes 
and frizzy red hair, the effect of which was indescribably 
frightful. Both here and at Ibrim there are many of these 
'• fair " families, who claim to be descended from Bosnian 
fathers stationed in Nubia at the time of the conquest of 
Sultan Selim in a.d. 1517. They are immensely proud of 
their alien blood, and think themselves quite beautiful. 

All hands being safe on board, we pushed off at once, leav- 
ing about a couple of hundred disconsolate dealers on the 
bank. A long-drawn howl of disappointment followed in our 
wake. Those who had sold, and those who had not sold, 
were alike wronged, ruined, and betrayed. One woman tore 
wildly along the bank, shrieking and beating her breast. 
Foremost among the sellers, she had parted from her gold 
brow-pendant for a good price ; but was inconsolable now for 
the loss of it. 

It often happened that those who had been most eager to 
trade, were readiest to repent of their bargains. Even so, 
however, their cupidity outweighed their love of finery. 
IVIoved once or twice by the lamentations of some dark dam- 
sel who had sold her necklace at a handsome profit, we 
offered to annul the purchase. But it invariably proved that, 
despite her tears, she preferred to keep the money. 



KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 245 

The palms of Derr and of the rich district beyond, were 
the finest we saw throughout the journey. Straight and 
strong and magnificently plumed, they rose to an average 
height of seventy or eighty feet. These superb plantations 
supply all Egypt with saplings, and contribute a heavy tax 
to the revenue. The fruit, sun-dried and shrivelled, is also 
sent northwards in large quantities. 

The trees are cultivated with strenuous industry by the 
natives, and owe as much of their perfection to laborious ir- 
rigation as to climate. The foot of each separate palm is 
surrounded by a circular trench into which the water is con- 
ducted by a small channel about fourteen inches in width. 
Every palm-grove stands in a network of these artificial run- 
lets. The reservoir from which they are supplied is filled by 
means of a Sakkieh, or \vater-wheel — a primitive and pic- 
turesque machine consisting of two wheels, the one set ver- 
tically to the river and slung with a chain of pots ; the other 
a horizontal cog turned sometimes by a camel, but more fre- 
quently in Nubia by a buffalo. The pots (which go down 
empty, dip under the water, and come up full) feed a sloping 
trough which in some places supplies a reservoir, and in 
others communicates at once with the irrigating channels. 
These sakkiehs are kept perpetually going ; and are set so 
close just above Derr, that the Writer counted a line of fif- 
teen within the space of a single mile. There were probably 
quite as many on the opposite bank. 

The sakkiehs creak atrociously ; and their creaking ranges 
over an unlimited gamut. From morn till dewy eve, from 
dewy eve till morn, they squeak, they squeal, they grind, 
they groan, they croak. Heard after dark, sakkieh answer- 
ing to sakkieh, their melancholy chorus makes night hideous. 
To sleep through it is impossible. Being obliged to moor a 
few miles beyond Derr, and having lain awake half the night, 
we offered a sakkieh-driver a couple of dollars if he would let 
his wheel rest till morning. But time and water are more 
precious than even dollars at this season; and the man re- 
fused. All we could do, therefore, was to punt into the 
middle of the river, and lie off at a point as nearly as possi- 
ble equidistant from our two nearest enemies. 

The native dearly loves the tree which costs him so much 
labour, and thinks it the chef-d' oetivre of creation. When 
Allah made the first man, says an Arab legend, he found he 
had a little clay to spare ; so with that he made the palm. 
And to the poor Nubian, at all events, the gifts of the palm 



240 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



are almost divine ; supplying food for his children, thatch 
for his hovel, timber for his water-wheel, ropes, matting, 
cups, bowls, and even the strong drink forbidden by the 
Prophet. The date-wine is yellowish-white, like whisky. It 
is not a wine, however, but a spirit; coarse, fiery, and un- 
palatable. 




SAKKIEH, OH WATEK-WHEEL 



Certain trees — as for instance the perky little pine of the 
G-erman wald — are apt to become monotonous; but one 
never wearies of the palm. Whether taken singly or in 
masses, it is always graceful, always suggestive. To the 
sketcher on the Nile, it is simply invaluable. It breaks the 
long parallels of river and bank, and composes with the stern 



KOROSEO TO ABOU SIM BEL. 247 

lines of Egyptian architecture as no other tree in the world 
could do. 

'■Subjects indeed!" said once upon a time an eminent 
artist to the present Writer; "fiddlesticks about subjects! 
Your true painter can make a picture out of a post and a 
puddle." 

Substitute a palm, however, for a post ; combine it with 
anything that comes first — a camel, a shadoof, a woman 
with a water-jar upon her head — and your picture stands 
before you ready made. 

Nothing more surprised me at first than the colour of the 
palm-frond, which painters of eastern landscape are wont to 
depict of a hard, bluish tint, like the colour of a yucca leaf. 
Its true shade is a tender, bloomy, sea-green grey; difiicult 
enough to match, but in most exquisite harmony with the 
glow of the sky and the gold of the desert. 

The palm-groves kept us company for many a mile, backed 
on the Arabian side by long level ranges of sandstone cliffs 
horizontally stratified, like those of the Thebaid. We now 
scarcely ever saw a village — only palms, and sakkiehs, and 
sandbanks in the river. The villages were there, but invis- 
ible ; being built on the verge of the desert. Arable land is 
too valuable in Nubia for either the living to dwell upon it 
or the dead to be buried in it. 

At Ibrini — a sort of ruined Ehrenbreitstein on the top of 
a grand precipice overhanging the river — we touched for 
only a few minutes, in order to buy a very small shaggy 
sheep which had been brought down to the landing-place for 
sale. But for the breeze that happened just then to be blow- 
ing, we should have liked to climb the rock, and see the view 
and the ruins — which are part modern, part Turkish, part 
Kouian, and little, if at all, Egyptian. 

There are also some sculptured and painted grottoes to be 
seen in the southern face of the mountain. They are, how- 
ever, too difficult of access to be attempted oy ladies. Alfred, 
who went ashore after quail, was drawn up to them by ro])es ; 
but found them so much defaced as to be scarcely worth the 
trouble of a visit. 

We were now only thirty-four miles from Abou Simbel ; 
but making slow progress, and impatiently counting every 
foot of the way. The heat at times was great; frequent and 
fitful spells of Khamsin wind alternating with a hot calm 
that tried the trackers sorely. Still we pushed forward, a 
few miles at a time, till by and by the flat-topped cliffs 



248 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

dropped out of sight and were again succeeded by volcanic 
peaks, some of which looked loftier than any of those about 
Dakkeh or Korosko. 

Then the palms ceased, and the belt of cultivated lanu 
narrowed to a thread of green between the rocks and the 
water's edge; and at last there came an evening when we 
only wanted breeze enough to double two or three more 
bends in the river. 

" Is it to be Abou Simbel to-night ? " we asked, for the 
twentieth time before going down to dinner. 

To which Reis Hassan replied, " Aiwah" (certainly). 

But the pilot shook his head, and added, "Bukra" (to- 
morrow). 

When we came up again, the moon had risen, but the 
breeze had dropped. Still we moved, impelled by a breath 
so faint that one could scarcely feel it. Presently even this 
failed. The sail collapsed ; the pilot steered for the bank ; 
the captain gave the word to go aloft — when a sudden puff 
from the north changed our fortunes, and sent us out again 
with a well-filled sail into the middle of the river. 

None of us, I think, will be likely to forget the sustained 
excitement of the next three hours. As the moon climbed 
higher, a light more mysterious and unreal than the light 
of day filled and overflowed the wide expanse of river and 
desert. We could see the mountains of Abou Simbel stand- 
ing as it seemed across our path, in the far distance — a lower 
one first ; then a larger ; then a series of receding heights, 
all close together, yet all distinctly separate. 

That large one — the mountain of the Great Temple — 
held us like a spell. For a long time it looked a mere moun- 
tain like the rest. By and by, however, we fancied we de- 
tected a something — a shadow — such a shadow as might 
be cast by a gigantic buttress. Next appeared a black speck 
no bigger than a porthole. We knew that this black speck 
must be the doorway. We knew that the great statues were 
there, though not yet visible ; and that we must soon see 
them. 

For our sailors, meanwhile, there was the excitement of 
a chase. The Bagstones and three other dahabeeyahs were 
coming up behind us in the path of the moonlight. Their 
galley fires glowed like beacons on the water ; the nearest 
about a mile away, the last a spark in the distance. We 
were not in the mood to care much for racing to-night ; but 
we were anxious to keep our lead and be first at the mooring- 
place. 



KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 249 

To run upon a sandbank at such a moment was like being 
plunged suddenly into cold water. Our sail Happed furi- 
ously. The men rushed to the punting poles. Four jumped 
overboard, and shoved Avitli all the might of their shoulders. 
By the time we got off, however, the other boats had crept 
up half a mile nearer; and we had hard work to keep them 
from pressing closer on our heels. 

At length the last corner was rounded, and the Great 
Temple stood straight before us. The fa9ade, sunk in the 
mountain-side like a huge picture in a mighty frame, was 
now quite plain to see. The black speck was no longer a 
porthole, but a lofty doorway. 

Last of all, though it was night and they were still not 
much less than a mile away, the four colossi came out, ghost- 
like, vague, and shadowy, in the enchanted moonlight. Even 
as we watched them, they seemed to grow — to dilate — to 
be moving towards us out of the silvery distance. 

It was drawing on towards midnight when the Philse at 
length ran in close under the Great Temple. Content with 
what they had seen from the river, the rest of the party then 
went soberly to bed ; but the Painter and the Writer had no 
patience to wait till morning. Almost before the mooring- 
rope could be made fast, they had jumped ashore and begun 
climbing the bank. 

They went and stood at the feet of the colossi, and on the 
threshold of that vast portal beyond which was darkness. 
The great statues towered above their heads. The river 
glittered like steel in the far distance. There was a keen 
silence in the air ; and towards the east the Southern Cross 
v/as rising. To the strangers who stood talking there with 
bated breath, the time, the place, even the sound of their 
own voices, seemed unreal. They felt as if the whole scene 
must fade with the moonlight, and vanish before morning. 



250 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XV. 

RAMESES THE GREAT. 

The central figure of Egyptian history has always been, 
probably always will be, Rameses the Second. He holds 
this place partly by right, partly by accident. He was born 
to greatness ; he achieved greatness ; and he had borrowed 
greatness thrust upon him. It was his singular destiny not 
only to be made a posthumous usurper of glory, but to be 
forgotten by his own name and remembered in a variety of 
aliases. As Sesoosis, as Osymandias, as Sesostris, he became 
credited in course of time with all the deeds of all the heroes 
of the new Empire, beginning with Thothmes III, who pre- 
ceded him by 300 years, and ending with Sheshonk, the 
captor of Jerusalem, who lived four centuries after him. 
Modern science, however, has repaired this injustice ; and, 
while disclosing the long-lost names of a brilliant succession 
of sovereigns, has enabled us to ascribe to each the honours 
which are his due. We know now that some of these were 
greater conquerors than Rameses II. We suspect that some 
were better rulers. Yet the popular hero keeps his ground. 
What he has lost by interpretation on the one hand, he has 
gained by interpretation on the other ; and the beaic sabreur 
of the Third Sallier Papyrus remains to this day the rep- 
resentative Pharaoh of a line of monarchs whose history 
covers a space of fifty centuries, and whose frontiers reached 
at one time from Mesopotamia to the ends of the Soudan. 

The interest that one takes in Rameses II begins at Mem- 
phis, and goes on increasing all the way up the river. It is 
a purely living, a purely personal interest ; such as one feels 
in Athens for Pericles, or in Florence for Lorenzo the Mag- 
nificent. Other Pharaohs but languidly affect the imagina- 
tion. Thothmes and Amenhotep are to us as Darius or 
Artaxerxes — shadows that come and go in the distance. 
But with the second Rameses we are on terms of respectful 
intimacy. We seem to know the man — to feel his presence 
— to hear his name in the air. His features are as familiar 



R AMESES THE GREAT. 



251 



to US as those of Henry the Eighth or Louis the Fourteenth. 
His cartouches meet us at every turn. Even to those who 
do not read the hieroglyphic character, those well-known 
signs convey, by sheer force of association, the name and 
style ^ of Rameses, beloved of Amen. 

This being so, the traveller is 
ill equipped who goes through 
Egypt without something more 
than a mere guide-book knowl- 
edge of Rameses II. He is, as 
it were, content to read the Ar- 
gument and miss the Poem. In 
the desolation of Memphis, in 
the shattered splendour of 
Thebes, he sees only the ordi- 
nary pathos of ordinary ruins. 
As for Abou Siuibel, the most 
stupendous historical record 
ever transmitted from the past 
to the present, it tells him a but 
half-intelligible story. Holding to the merest thread of ex- 
planation, he wanders from hall to hall, lacking altogether that 
potent charm of foregone association which no Murray can 
furnish. Your average Frenchman straying helplessly through 
Westminster Abbey under the conduct of the verger has 
about as vague a conception of the historical import of the 
things he sees. 

What is true of the traveller is equally true of those who 
take their Nile vicariously " in connection with Mudie." If 
they are to understand any description of Abou Simbel, they 
must first know something about Rameses II. Let us then, 
while the Philge lies moored in the shadow of the rock of 
Abshek,^ review, as summarily as may be, the leading facts 




CARTOUCIIICS OF RAMESKS THU 
GKKAT. 



1 Rendered thus into Latin by M. Chabas: Sol dominus veritatis electu-t 
a Sole, Sol genvit eum ; amans Ammoneni. Anglice — Sun Lord of Trutli, 
Chosen of the Sun, Son of the Sun, Ammon-loving. The following is an 
extract translation of the hieroglyphs : — 



o 



AAfW O 



3=1 



Ra - user - Ma Setp -en- Ra Ra - mes - «m Mer - Amen 
KiistroHg (in) Truth Approved of Ra lla Son (of) Beloved (of) A men 



2 Abshek : — The hieroglyphic name of Abou Simbel. G?: Ahoccis. 



252 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

of this important reign ; sue]) facts, that is to sa}', as are 
recorded in inscriptions, papyri, and other contemporary 
monuments. 

Rameses the Second ^ was the son of Seti I, the second 
Pharoah of the XlXth Dynasty, and of a certain Princess 
Tuaa, described on the monuments as " royal wife, royal 
mother, and heiress and sharer of the throne." She is sup- 
posed to have been of the ancient royal line of the preceding 
dynasty, and so to have had, perhaps, a better right than her 
husband to the double crown of Egypt. Through her, at 
all events, Rameses II seems to have been in some sense 
born a king,^ equal in rank, if not in power, with his father; 
his rights, moreover, were fully recognised by Seti, who 
accorded him royal and divine honours from the hour of his 
birth, or, in the language of the Egyptian historians, while 
he was "yet in the egg." The great dedicatory inscription 
of the Temple of Osiris at Abydos,^ relates how his father 
took the royal child in his arms, when he was yet little more 
than an infant, showed him to the people as their king, and 
caused him to be invested by the great officers of the palace 
with the double crown of the two lands. The same inscription 
states that he was a general from his birth, and that as a 
nursling he " commanded the body guard and the brigade of 

1 Id the present state of Egyptian chronology, it is hazardous to assign 
even an approximate date to events which liappened before the conquest of 
Cambyses. The Egyptians, in fact, had no chronology in the strict sense of 
the word. Being without any fixed point of departure, such as the birth 
of Christ, they counted the events of each reign from the accession of the 
sovereign. Under sucli a system, error and confusion were inevitable. 
To say when Rameses II was born and when he died is impossible. The 
very century in which he fiourislied is uncertain. Mariette, taking the 
historical lists of Manetho for his basis, supposes the XlXth Dynasty to 
have occupied the interval comprised within b.c. 1462 and 1288; according 
to which computation (allowing 57 years for the reigns of Rameses I and 
Seti I) the reign of Rameses II would date from B.C. 1405. Brugsch gives 
him from B.C. 1407 to b.c 1:j41 ; and Lepsius places his reign in the sixty- 
six years lying between b.c. 1388 and b.c. 1322; these calculations being 
both made before the discovery of the stela of Abydos. Bunsen dates his 
accsssion from B.C. 1352. Between the higliest and the lowest of these 
calculations there is, as shown by the following table, a difference of 55 
years : — 

Rameses II began to reign B.C. 

'^ f Brugsch . 1407 

'M Q Mariette 1405 

3 ^ ' Lepsius 1388 

^ [ Bunsen 1352 

2 See chap. viii. footnote, p. 140. 

3 See Essai svr I'Inscrlption Dediratoire du Temple d' Abydos et la 
Jeunesse de Sesotris. — G. Maspero, Paris, 1867. 



RAMESES THE GREAT. 253 

chariot-fighters ; " but these titles must of course have been 
purely honorary. At twelve years of age, he was formally 
associated with his father upon the throne, and by the grad- 
ual retirement of Seti I from the cares of active government, 
the co-royalty of Rameses became, in the course of the next 
ten or fifteeen years, an undivided responsibility. He was 
probably about thirty when his father died ; and it is from 
this time that the years of his reign are dated. In other 
words, Rameses II, in his official records, counts only from 
the period of his sole reign, and the year of the death of 
Seti is the "year one" of the monumental inscriptions of 
his son and successor. In the second, fourth, and fifth years 
of his monarchy, he personally conducted campaigns in 
Syria, more than one of the victories then achieved being 
commemorated on the rock-cut tablets of Nahr-el-Kelb near 
Beyrut ; and that he was by this time recognised as a mighty 
warrior is shown by the stela of Dakkeh, which dates from 
the ''third year," and celebrates hiin as terrible in battle — 
''the bull powerful against Ethiopia, the griffin furious 
against the negroes, whose grip has put the mountaineers to 
flight." The events of the caiui)aigu of his "fifth year" 
(undertaken in order to reduce to obedience the revolted 
tribes of Syria and Mesopotamia) are immortalised in the 
poem of Pentaur.^ It was on this occasion that he fought 
his famous single-handed fight, against overwhelming odds, 
in the sight of both armies under the walls of Kadesh. 
Three years later, he carried fire and sword into the land of 
Canaan, and in his eleventh year, according to inscriptions 
yet extant upon the ruined pylons of the Ramesseum at 
Thebes, he took, among other strong places on sea and shore, 
the fortresses of Asealon and Jerusalem. 

The next important record transports us to the twenty-first 
year of his reign. Ten years have now gone by since the 
fall of Jerusalem, during which time a fluctuating frontier 
warfare has probably been carried on, to the exhaustion of 
both armies. Khetasira, Prince of Kheta,^ sues for peace. 
An elaborate treaty is thereupon framed, whereby the said 
Prince and " Rameses, Chief of Rulers, who fixed his fron- 
tiers where he pleases," pledge themselves to a strict offensive 
and defensive alliance, and to the maintenance of good-will 
and brotherhood forever. This treaty, we are told, was en- 

' See chap. viii. p. 140. 

2 i.e. Prince of the Hittites; the Kheta being now identified with that 
people. 



254 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

graved for the Khetan prince " upon a tablet of silver adorned 
with the likeness of the figure of Sutekh, the Great Ruler of 
Heaven ; " while for Rameses Mer-Amen it was graven on a 
wall adjoining the Great Hall at Karnak/ where it remains 
to this day. 

According to the last clause of this curious document, the 
contracting parties enter also into an agreement to deliver 
up to each other the political fugitives of both countries; 
providing at the same time for the personal safety of the 
offenders. " Whosoever shall be so delivered up," says the 
treaty, "himself, his wives, his children, let him not be 
smitten to death ; moreover, let him not suffer in his eyes, 
in his mouth, in his feet; moreover, let not any crime be set 
up against him." ^ This is the earliest instance of an extradi- 
tion treaty upon record ; and it is chiefly remarkable as an 
illustration of the clemency with which international law 
was at that time administered. 

Finally, the convention between the sovereigns is placed 
under the joint protection of the gods of both countries : 
" Sutekh of Kheta, Amen of Egypr, and all the thousand 
gods, the gods male and female, the gods of the hills, of the 
rivers, of the great sea, of the winds and the clouds, of the 
land of Kheta and of the land of Egypt." 

The peace now concluded would seem to have remained 
unbroken throughout the rest of the long reign of Raraeses 
the Second. We hear, at all events, of no more Avars; and 
we find the king married presently to a Khetan princess, 
who in deference to the gods of her adopted country takes 
the official name of Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ra, or " Contemplating 
the Beauties of Ra." The names of two other queens — 
Nefer-t-ari and Ast-nefert — are also found upon the monu- 
ments. 

These three were probably the only legitimate wives of 
Rameses TI, though he must also have been the lord of an 
extensive hareem. His family, at all events, as recorded 

1 This invaluable record is sculptured on a piece of wall built out, 
apparently for the purpose, at right angles to the south wall of the Hypo- 
style Hall at Karnak. The treaty faces to the west, and is situate about 
half-way between the famous bas-relief of Sheshonk and his captives, and 
the Karnak version of the poem of Pentaur. The former lies to the west 
of the southern portal ; the latter to the east. The wall of the treaty juts 
out about sixty feet to the east of the portal. This south wall and its 
adjunct, a length of about 200 feet in all, is perhaps the most precious and 
interesting piece of sculptured surface in the world. 

2 See Treaty of Peace betiveen Rameses II and the Hittites, translated 
by C. W. Goodwin, M.A. — Records of the Past, vol. iv. p. 25. 



R AMESES THE GEE AT. 255 

upon the walls of the Temple at Wady Sabooah, amounted 
to no less than 170 children, of whom 111 were princes. 
This may have been a small family for a great king three 
thousand years ago. It was but the other day, comparatively 
speaking, that Lepsius saw and talked with old Hasan, 
Kashef of Derr — the same petty ruler who gave so mnch 
trouble to Belzoni, Burckhardt, and other early travellers — 
and he, like a patriarch of old, had in his day been the hus- 
band of sixty-four wives, and the father of something like 
200 children. 

For forty-six years after the making of the Khetan treaty, 
Rameses the Great lived at peace with his neighbours and 
tributaries. The evening of his life was long and splendid. 
It became his passion and his pride to found new cities, to 
raise dykes, to dig canals, to build fortresses, to multipl}^ 
statues, obelisks, and inscriptions, and to erect the most gor- 
geous and costly temples in which man ever worshipped. 
To the monuments founded by his predecessors he made 
additions so magnificent that they dwarfed the designs they 
were intended to complete. He caused artesian wells to be 
pierced in the stony bed of the desert. He carried on the 
canal begun by his father, and opened a water-way between 
the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.^ No enterprise was 

1 Since this book was written, a further study of the subject has led 
me to conjecture that not Seti I, but Queen Hatshepsu (Hatasu) of the 
XVII Ith Dynasty, was the actual originator of the canal wliich connected 
the Nile with the Red Sea. The inscriptions engraved upon the walls of 
her great Temple at Dayr-el-Bahari expressly state that her squadron sailed 
from Thebes to the Land of Punt, and returned from Punt to Thebes, laden 
with the products of that mysterious country which Mariette and Maspero 
have conclusively shown to have been situate on the Somali coast-line 
between Bab-el-Mandeb and Cape Guardafui. Unless, therefore, some 
water-way existed at that time between the Nile and the Red Sea, it 
follows that Queen Hatshepsu's squadron of discovery must have sailed 
northward from Thebes, descended the Nile to one of its mouths, traversed 
the whole length of the Mediterranean Sea, gone out through the Pillars 
of Hercules, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Somali 
coast by way of the Mozambique Channel and the shores of Zanzibar. In 
other words, the Egyptian galleys would twice have made the almost com- 
plete circuit of the African continent. This is obviously an untenable 
hypothesis; and there remains no alternative route except that of a canal, 
or chain of canals, connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. The old Wady 
Tiimilat canal has hitherto been universally ascribed to Seti I, for no other 
reason than that a canal leading from the Nile to the ocean is represented 
on a bas-relief of his reign on the north outer wall of the Great Temple 
of Karnak ; but this canal may undoubtedly have been made under the 
preceding dynasty, and it is not only probable, but most likely, that the 
great woman-Pharaoh, who first conceived the notion of venturing her 
ships upon an unknown sea, may also have organised the channel of com- 
munication by which those ships went forth. According to the second 
edition of Sir J. W. Dawson's Eijypt and Sijria, the recent surveys con- 



256 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

too difficult, no project too vast, for his ambition. " As a 
child," says the stela of Dakkeh, " he superintended the 
public works, and his hands laid their foundations." As 
a man, he became the supreme Builder. Of his gigantic 
structures, only certain colossal fragments have survived the 
ravages of time ; yet those fragments are the wonder of the 
world. 

To estimate the cost at which these things were done is 
now impossible. Every temple, every palace, represented a 
hecatomb of human lives. Slaves from Ethiopia, captives 
taken in war, Syrian immigrants settled in the Delta, were 
alike pressed into the service of the State. We know how 
the Hebrews suffered, and to what an extremity of despair 
they were reduced by the tasks imposed upon them. Yet 
even the Hebrews were less cruelly used than some who 
were kidnapped beyond the frontiers. Torn from their 
homes without hope of return, driven in herds to the mines, 
the quarries, and the brick-fields, these hapless victims were 
so dealt with that not even the chances of desertion were 
open to them. The negroes from the south were systemati- 
cally drafted to the north ; the Asiatic captives were trans- 
ported to Ethiopia. Those who laboured underground were 
goaded on without rest or respite, till they fell down in the 
mines and died. 

That Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the captivity,' and 

ducted by Lieut.-Col. Ardagli, Major Spaight, and Lieut. Burton, all of 
the Royal Engineers, " render it certain that this valley [z.e. the Wady 
Tiiinilat] once carried a branch of the Nile which discharged its waters 
into the Red Sea" (see chap. iii. p. 55); and in such case, if that branch 
were not already navigable. Queen Hatshepsu would only have needed to 
canalise it, which is what she probably did. [Note to Second Edition.] 

' " Les circonstances de I'histoire he'braique s'appliquent ici d'une nia- 
niere on ne pent plus satisfaisante. Les Hebreux opprimes batissaient uiie 
ville du noiu de Ramses. Ce recit ne pent done s'appliquer qu'a I'e'poque oil 
la faniille de Ramses etait sur le trone. Moise, contraint de fuir la colere du 
roi apres le meurtre d'un Egyptien, subit un long exil, parceque le roi ne 
mourut qn'apres toi temps fort lonr/ : Ramses II regna en effet plus de (it 
ans. Aussitot apres le retour de Mo'ise cominen9a la lutte qui se termina 
par le celebre passage de la Mer rouge. Get e'venement eut done lieu sous 
le tils de Ramses II, ou tout au plus tard pendant I'epoque de troubles qui 
suivit son rogne. Ajoutons que la rapidite' des derniers e've'nements ne 
permet pas de supposer que le roi eut sa re'sideiice a Thebes dans oet instant. 
Or, Meneptah a pre'cise'.nent laisse dans la Basse-Egypte, et specialement 
a Tanis, des preuves importantes de son scjour." — De Rouge, Notice des 
Monuments E(iyptiennes du Rez de Chaussee du Muse'e dxi Louvre, Paris, 
1857, p. 22. 

" 11 est impossible d'attribuer ni a Meneptah I, ni a Seti II, ni a Siptah, 
ni a Amonmeses, un regne meme de vingt anne'es: a plus forte raison de 
cinquante ou soixante. Seul, le regne de Ramses II remplit les conditions 
indispensables. Lors meme que nous ne saurions pas que ce souverain a 



R AMESES THE GREAT, 257 

that Meneptah, his son and successor, was the Pharaoh of the 
Exodus/ are now among the accepted presumptions of Egypto- 
logical science. Tlie Bible and the monuments contirm eacdi 
other upon these points, while both are again corroborated by 
the results of recent geographical and philological research. 
The " treasure-cities Fitliom and Raanises " which the Israel- 
ites built for Pharaoh with bricks of their own making, are 
the Pa-Tum and Pa-Rameses of the inscriptions, and both 
have recently been identified by M. Naville, in the course of 
his excavations conducted in 1883 and 1886 for the Egypt 
Exploration Fund. 

The discovery of Pithom, the ancient Biblical "treasure- 
city " of the first chapter of Exodus, has probably attracted 
more public attention, and been more widely discussed by 
European savants, than any archaeological event since the dis- 
covery of Nineveh. It was in February 1883 that M. Naville 
opened the well-known mound of Tel-el-Maskhutah, on the 
south bank of the new sweet-water canal in the Wady Tumi- 
lat, and there discovered the foundations and other remains 
of a fortified city of the kind known in Egyptian as a Bekhen, 
or store-fort. This Bekhen, which was sui'rounded by a wall 
30 feet in thickness, proved to be about 12 acres in extent. 
In one corner of the enclosure were found the ruins of a temple 
built by Rameses II. The rest of the area consisted of a 
labyrinth of subterraneous rectangular cellars, or store-cham- 

occup^ les Hebreux a la construction de la ville cle Ramses, nous serions 
dans IMmpossibilite de placer Moise a une autre e'poque, a moins de faire 
table rase des renseignements bibliques." — Recherches pour servir a I'His- 
loire de la XIX Dynast le : F. Chabas; Paris, 1873; p. 148. 

i The Bible narrative, it has often been observed, invariably designates 
the King by this title, than which none, unfortunately, can be more vague 
for purposes of identification. "Plus ge'neralement," says Brugsch, writ- 
ing of the royal titles, " sa personne se cache sous une se'rie d'expressions qui 
toutes ont le sens de la ' grande maison ' ou du ' grand palais,' quelquefois 
au duel, des ' deux rjrandes malsons,- par rapport a la division de I'Egypte 

en deux parties. C'est du titre tres frequent — ^^_,^ Per-aa, * la grande 

maison,' ' la haute porta,' qu'on a heureusement derive le noni biblique 
Pharno donne aux rois d'Bgypte." — Histoire d'Egypte, Brugsch: 2d edi- 
tion. Part T, p. 35; Leipzig," 1875. 

This probably is the only title under which it was permissible for the 
plebeian class to speak or write of the sovereign. It can scarcely have es- 
caped Herr Brugsch's notice that we even find it literally translated in 
Genesis 1. 4, where it is said that " when the days of his mourning were 
past, Joseph spake unto the hoiif^e of Pharaoh, saying. If now I have found 
grace in your eyes," etc., etc. If Moses, however, had but once recorded 
the cartouche name of either of his three Pharaohs, archa?ologists and com- 
mentators would have been spared i great deal of trouble. 



258 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

bers, constructed of sun-dried bricks of large size, and divided 
by walls varying from 8 to 10 feet in thickness. In the 
ruins of the temple were discovered several statues more or 
less broken, a colossal hawk inscribed with the royal ovals of 
Ranieses II, and other works of art dating from the reigns 
of Osorkon II, Nectanebo, and Ptolemy Philadelphus. The 
hieroglyphic legends engraved upon the statues established 
the true value of the discovery by giving both the name of 
the city and the name of the district in which the city was 
situate; the first being Pa-Tum (Pithom), the "Abode of 
Tum," and the second being Thuku-t (Succoth) ; so identify- 
ing " Ta-Tum, in the district of Thuku-t," with Pithom, the 
treasure-city built by the forced labour of the Hebrews, and 
Succoth, the region in which they made their first halt on 
going forth from the land of bondage. Even the bricks with 
which the great wall and the walls of the store-chambers are 
built bear eloquent testimony to the toil of the suffering col- 
onists, and confirm in its minutest details the record of their 
oppression • some being duly kneaded with straAv ; others, 
when the straw was no longer forthcoming, being mixed with 
the leafage of a reed common to the marshlands of the Delta; 
and the remainder, when even this substitute ran short, being 
literally " bricks without straw," moulded of mere clay crudely 
dried in the sun. The researches of M. Naville further showed 
that the Temple to Tum, founded by Rameses II, was restored, 
or rebuilt, by Osorkon II of the XXIInd Dynasty ; while at 
a still higher level were discovered the remains of a Roman 
fortress. That Pithom was still an important place in the 
time of the Ptolemies is proved by a large and historically 
important tablet found by M. Naville in one of the store- 
chambers, where it had been thrown in with other sculptures 
and rubbish of various kinds. This table records repairs 
done to the canal, an expedition to Ethiopia, and the founda- 
tion of the city of Arsinoe. Not less important from a 
geographical point of view was the finding of a Roman mile- 
stone which identifies Pithom with Hero (Heroopolis), where, 
according to the Septuagint, Joseph went forth to meet Jacob. 
This milestone gives nine Roman miles as the distance from 
Heroopolis to Clysma. A very curious MS. lately discovered 
by Signore Gamurrini in the library of Arezzo, shows that 
even so late as the fourth century of the Christian era, this 
ancient walled enclosure — the camp, or " Ero Castra," of 
the Roman period, the "Pithom" of the Bible — was still 
known to pious pilgrims as " the Pithom built by the Chil- 



E AMESES THE GREAT. 259 

dren of Israel ; " that the adjoining town, external to the camp, 
at that time established within the old Pithom boundaries, was 
known as " Heroopolis ; " and that the town of Rameses was 
distant from Pithom about twenty Roman miles. ^ 

As regards Pa-Rameses, the other "treasure-city" of Ex- 
odus, it is conjecturally, but not positively, identified by M. 
Naville with the mound of Saft-el-Henneh, the scene of his 
explorations in 1886. That Saft-el-Henneh was identical with 
" Kes," or Goshen, the capital town of the " Land of Goshen," 
has been unequivocally demonstrated by the discoverer ; and 
that it was also known, in the time of Rameses II as " Pa- 
Rameses " is shown to be highly probable.^ There are re- 
mains of a temple built of black basalt, with pillars, frag- 
ments of statues, and the like, all inscribed with the cartouches 
of Rameses II ; and the distance from Pithom is just twenty 
Roman miles. 

It was from Pa-Rameses that Rameses II set out with his 
army to attack the- confederate princes of Asia Minor then 
lying in ambush near Kadesh ; ^ and it was hither that he re- 
turned in triumph after the great victory. A contemporary 
letter written by one Panbesa, a scribe, narrates in glowing 
terms the beauty and abundance of the royal city, and tells 
how the damsels stood at their doors in holiday apparel, with 
nosegays in their hands and sweet oil upon their locks, "on 
the day of the arrival of the War-God of the world." This 
letter is in the British Museum.^ 

1 This remarkable MS. relates the journey made by a female pilgrim of 
French birth, circa A. d. 370, to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Holy Land. 
The MS. is copied from an older original, and dates from the tenth or elev- 
enth century. Much of the work is lost, but those parts are yet perfect 
which describe the pilgrim's progress through Goshen to Tanis, and thence 
to Jerusalenj, Edessa, and the Haran. Of Pithom it is said: " Pithona 
etiam civitas quam cedificavemnt filii Israel ostensa est nobis in ipso itinere ; 
in eo tamen loco ubi jam fines Egypti intravimus, religentes jam terras Sara- 
cenorum. Nam et ipsud nunc Pithona castrum est. "Heroun autem civitas 
quae fuit illo tempere, id est ubi occurit Joseph patri suo venienti, sicut 
scriptum est in libro Genesis nunc est comes sed graudis quod nos dicimus 
vicus . . . nam ipse vicus nunc appellatur Hero." Seealetteron " Pithom- 
Heroopolis " communicated to The Academy by M. Naville, March 22, 1884. 
See also M. Naville's memoir, entitled The Store City of Pithom and the 
Route of the Exodus (Third E(lition) : published by order of the Committee 
of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1888. 

2 See M. Naville's Memoir, entitled Goshen and the Shrine of Saft-el- 
Henneh, published by order of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration 
Fund, 1887. 

3 Kadesh, otherwise Katesh or Kades. A town on the Orontes. See 
a paper entitled, " The Campaign of Rameses the Second, in his V'" year, 
against Kadesh on the Orontes," by the Rev. G. H. Tomkins, in the Pro- 
ceedinr/s of the Society of Biblical Archpeology, 1881, 1882; also in the 
Transactions of the Society, vol. viii. 

^ Anastasi Papyri, No III, Crit. Mus. 



260 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Other letters written during the reign of Rameses II have 
by some been supposed to make direct mention of the 
Israelites. 

" I have obeyed the orders of my master," writes the scribe 
Kauiser to his superior Bak-en-Ptah, " being bidden to serve 
out the rations to the soldiers, and also to the Aperiu 
[Hebrews ?] who quarry stone for the palace of King 
Kameses Mer-Amen." A similar document written by a 
scribe named Keniamon, and couched in almost the same 
words, shows these Aperiu on another occasion to have been 
quarrying for a building on the southern side of Memphis ; 
in which case Turra would be the scene of their labours. 

These invaluable letters,, written on papyrus in the hieratic 
character, are in good preservation. They were found in the 
ruins of Memphis, and now form part of the treasures of the 
Museum of Ley den. ^ They bring home to us with startling 
nearness the events and actors of the Bible narrative. We 
see the toilers at their task, and the overseers reporting 
them to the directors of public works. They extract from 
the quarry those huge blocks which are our wonder to this 
day. Harnessed to rude sledges, they drag them to the river- 
side and embark them for transport to the opposite bank.^ 

1 See Me'lanr/es Egyptoloyiq-nes, by F. Chabas, 1 Serie, 1862. Tbere has 
been much discussion among Egyptologists on the subject of M. Chabas's 
identification of the Hebrews. Tlie name by whicli they are mentioned 
in the papyri here quoted, as well as in an inscription in the quarries of 
Hamamat, is Aperi-u. A learned critic in the Revue Archeolog iqiie (vol. 
V. 2d serie, 1862) writes as follows: " La decouverte du nom des Hebreux 
dans les hie'roglyphes serait un fait de la derniere importance ; mais comme 
aucun autre point liistorique n'off re peut-etre une pai-eille seduction, il faut 
aussi se mefier des illusions avec un soin meticuleux. La confusion des 
sons Ret L dans la langue egyptienne, et le voisinage des articulations B 
et P nuisent un peu, dans le cas particulier, a la rigueur des conclusions 
qu'on peut tire'r de la transcription. Neanmoins, il y a lieu de prendre en 
consideration ce fait que les Aperiu, dans les trois documents qui nous 
parlent d'eux, sout montres employes a des travaux de meme espece que 
ceux auxquels, selon I'Ecriture, les He'breux furent assujettis par les Egyp- 
tiens. La circonstance que les papyrus mentionnant ce nom ontete' trouves 
a Memphis, plaide encore en faveur de I'assimilation propose'e — de'couverte 
importante qu'il est a desirer de voir contirmee par d'autres monuments." 
It should be a:l l-^.l that the Aperiu also appear in the Inscription of 
Thothmes III at Karnak, and were supposed by Mariette to be the people 
of Ephou. It is, however, to be noted that the inscriptions mention two 
tribes of Aperiu, a greater and a lesser, or an upper and a lower tribe. This 
might perhaps consist with the establishment of Hebrew settlers in the 
Delta, and others in the neighbourhood of Memphis. The Aperiu, according 
to other inscriptions, appear to have been horsemen, or horse-trainers, 
which certainly tells against the probability of their identity with the 
Hebrews. 

'^ See the famous wall-painting of the Colossus on the Sledge engraved 
in Sir. G. Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; frontispiece to vol. ii. ed. 1871. 



R AMESES THE GREAT. 261 

Some are so large and so heavy that it takes a month to get 
them down from the mountain to the landing-place.^ Other 
labourers are elsewhere making bricks, digging canals, help- 
ing to build the great wall which reached from Pelusium 
to Heliopolis, and strengthening the defences not only of 
Pithom and Rameses, but of all the cities and forts between 
the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Their lot is hard ; but 
not harder than the lot of other workmen. They are well 
fed. They intermarry. They increase and multiply. The 
season of their great oppression is not yet come. They make 
bricks, it is true, and those who are so employed must 
supply a certain number daily ; ^ but the straw is not yet 
withheld, and the task, tliough perhaps excessive, is not 
impossible. For we are here in the reign of Rameses II, and 
the time when Meneptah shall succeed him is yet far dis- 
tant. It is not till tlie King dies that the children of Israel 
sigh, " by reason of the bondage." 

There are in the British Museum, the Louvre, and the 
Bibliotheque Nationale, some much older papyri than these 
two letters of the Ley den collection — some as old, indeed, 

1 In a letter written by a priest who lived during this reign (Rameses 
II), we find an interesting account of the disadvantages and hardships 
attending various trades and pursuits, as opposed to the ease and dignity 
of the sacerdotal office. Of the mason he says — "It is the climax of his 
misery to have to remove a block of ten cubits by six, a block which it 
takes a month to drag by the private ways among the houses." — Sallier 
Pap. No. II, Brit. Musse. 

^ " Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: 
let them go and gather straw for themselves. 

" And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall 
lay upon them: ye shall not diminish ought thereof . — Exodus chap. v. 
7,8. 

M. Chabas says: " Ces details sont completement conformes aux 
habitudes Egyptiennes. Le melange de paille et d'argile dans les briques 
antiques aete parfaitement reconnu. D'un autre cote, le travail a la tache 
est mentionne dans un texte e'crit au revers d'un papyrus celebrant la 
splendeur de la ville de Ramses, et datant, selon toute vraisemblance, du 
regne de Meneptah I. En voici la transcription: — ' Compte des masons, 
12; en outre des hommes a mouler la brique dans leurs villes, amene's aux 
travaux de la maison. Eux a faire leur nombre de briques journellement ; 
non ils sont a se relacher des travaux dans la maison neuve ; c'est ainsi que 
j'ai obei au mandat donne par mon maitre.' " Sse Eecherches pour seroii^ 
a I'Histoire de la XIX Dynastie, par F. Chabas. Paris; 1873, p. 149. 

The curious text thus translated into French by M. Chabas is written 
on the back of the papyrus already quoted (i.e. Letter of Panbesa, Anastasi 
Papyri, No. Ill), and is preserved in the British Museum. The wall- 
painting in a tomb of the XVIIIth Dynasty at Thebes, which represents 
foreign captives mixing clay, moulding, drying, and placing bricks, is well 
known from the illustration in Sir. G. Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, ed. 
of 1871, vol. ii. p. 19R. Cases 61 and 62 in the First Egyptian Room, British 
Museum, contain bricks of mixed clay and straw stamped with the names 
of Rameses II. 



262 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

as the time of Joseph — but none, perhaps, of such peculiar 
interest. In these, the scribes Kauiser and Keniamou seem 
still to live and speak. What would we not give for a few 
more of their letters ! These men knew Memphis in its glory, 
and had looked upon the face of Rameses the Great. They 
might even have seen Moses in his youth, while yet he lived 
under the protection of his adopted mother, a prince among 
princes. 

Kauiser and Keniamon lived, and died, and were mummied 
between three and four thousand years ago ; yet these frail 
fragments of papyrus have survived the wreck of ages, and 
the quaint writing with which tlie}^ are covered is as intelli- 
gible to ourselves as to the functionaries to whom it was 
addressed. The Egyptians were eminently business-like, and 
kept accurate entries of the keep and labour of their work- 
men and captives. From the earliest epoch of which the 
monuments furnish record, we find an elaborate bureaucratic 
system in full operation throughout the country. Even in 
the time of the pyramid-builders, there are ministers of 
public Avorks; inspectors of lands, lakes, and quarries; sec- 
retaries, clerks, and overseers innumerable.^ From all these, 
we may be sure, were required strict accounts of their 
expenditure, as well as reports of the work done under their 
supervision. Specimens of Egyptian bookkeeping are by no 
means rare. The Louvre is rich in memoranda of the kind; 
some relating to the date-tax ; others to the transport and 
taxation of corn, the payment of wages, the sale and purchase 
of land for burial, and the like. If any definite and quite 
unmistakable news of the Hebrews should ever reach us 
from Egyptian sources, it will almost certainly be through 
the medium of documents such as these. 

An unusally long reign, the last forty-six years of which 
would seem to have been spent in peace and outward pros- 
perity, enabled Rameses II to indulge his ruling passion with- 

1 " Les affaires de la cour et de 1' administration du pays sont expediees par 
les ' cliefs ' ou les ' intendants,' par les ' secretaires ' et par la nombreuse 
classe des scribes. . . . Le tresor rempli d'or et d'argent, et le divan des 
depenses et des recettes avaient leurs intendants a eux. La chambre des 
comptes ne manque pas. Les domaines, les proprietes, les palais, et meme 
les lacs du roi sont mis sous la garde d'inspecteurs. Les architectes du 
pharaon s'occupent de batisses d'apres I'ordre du pharaon. Les carrieres, 
a partir de celles du Moxattam (le Toora de nos jours) jusqu'a celles 
d' Assouan, se trouvent exploitees par des chefs qui surveillent le transport 
des pierres taillees a la place de leur destination. Finalement la corvee 
est dirigee par les chefs des travaux publics." Histoire d'Egypte, Brugsoh : 
3d edition, 1875 ; chap. v. pp. 34 and 35. 



R AMESES THE GREAT. 263 

out interruption. To draw up anything like an exhaustive 
catalogue of his known arcliitectural works would be equiv- 
alent to writing an itinerary of Egypt and Ethiopia under 
the XlXth Dynasty. His designs were as vast as his means 
appear to have been unlimited. From the Delta to Gebel 
Barkal, he filled the land with monuments dedicated to his 
own glory and the worship of the Gods. Upon Thebes, 
Abydos, and Tanis, he lavished structures of surpassing 
magnificence. In Nubia, at the places now known as Gerf 
Hossayn, Wady Sabooah, Derr, and Abou Simbel, he was the 
author of temples and the founder of cities. These cities, 
which would probably be better described as provincial towns, 
have disappeared ; and but for the mention of them in various 
inscriptions we should not even know that they had existed. 
Who shall say how many more have vanished, leaving neither 
trace nor record ? A dozen cities of Rameses ^ may yet lie 
buried under some of those nameless mounds which follow 
each other in such quick succession along the banks of the 
Nile in Middle and Lower Egypt. Only yesterday, as it 
were, the remains of what would seem to have been a mag- 
nificent structure decorated in a style absolutely unique, 
were accidentally discovered under the mounds of Tel-el- 
Yahoodeh,^ about twelve miles to the IST.E. of Cairo. There 
are probably fifty such mounds, none of which have been 
opened, in the Delta alone ; and it is no exaggeration to say 
that there must be some hundreds between the Mediterranean 
and the Eirst Cataract. 

^ The Pa-Rameses of the Bible narrative was not the only Egyptian city 
of that name. There was a Pa-Rameses near Memphis, and another Pa- 
Rameses at Abou Simbel ; and there may probably have been many more. 

2 " The remains were apparently those of a large hall paved with white 
alabaster slabs. The walls were covered with a variety of bricks and 
encaustic tiles ; many of the bricks were of most beautiful workmanship, 
the hieroglyphs in some being inlaid in glass. The capitals of the columns 
were inlaid with brilliant coloured mosaics, and a pattern in mosaics ran 
round the cornice. Some of the bricks are inlaid with the oval of Rameses 
III." See Murray's Handbook for Egypt, Route 7, p. 217. 

Case D, in the Second Egyptian Room at the British Museum, contains 
sevei-al of these tiles and terra-cottas, some of which are painted with 
figures of Asiatic and Negro captives, birds, serpents, etc. ; and are 
extremely beautiful both as regards design and execution. Murray is 
wrong, however, in attributing the building to Rameses II. The car- 
touches are those of Rameses III. The discovery was made by some 
labourers in 1870. 

Note to Second Edition. — This mound was excavated last year 
(1887) by M. Naville, acting as before for the Egypt Exploration Fund. 
See Supplementary Sheet to The Illustrated London Neivs, 17th September 
1887, containing a complete account of the excavations at Tel-el- Yahoodeh, 
etc., with illustrations. 



264 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

An inscription found of late years at Abydos slaows that 
Hameses II reigned over his great kingdom for the space of 
sixty-seven years. " It is thou," says Rameses IV, addressing 
himself to Osiris, "it is thou who wilt rejoice me with siich 
length of reign as Kameses II, the great God, in his sixty- 
seven years. It is thou who wilt give me the long duration 
of this great reign." ^ 

If only we knew at what age Kameses II succeeded to the 
throne, we should, by help of this inscription, know also the 
age at which he died. No such record has, however, tran- 
spired, but a careful comparison of the length of time occupied 
by the various events of his reign, and above all the evidence 
of age afforded by the mummy of this great Pharaoh, discov- 
ered in 1886, show that he must have been very nearl}^, if not 
quite, a centenarian. 

" Thou madest designs while yet in the age of infancy," 
says the stela of Dakkeh. " Thou wert a boy wearing the 
sidelock, and no monument was erected, and no order was 
given without thee. Thou wert a youth aged ten years, and 
all the public works were in thy hands, laying their founda- 
tions." Tliese lines, translated literally, cannot, hoAvever, be 
said to prove much. They certainly contain nothing to show 
that this youth of ten was, at the time alluded to, sole king 
and ruler of Egypt. That he was titular king, in the heredi- 
tary sense, from his birth ^ and during the lifetime of his 

1 This tablet is votive, and contains in fact a long Pharisaic prayer offered 
to Osiris by Rameses IV in the fourth year of his reign. The king enumer- 
ates his own virtues and deeds of piety, and implores the God to grant him 
length of days. See Snr nne Stele inedite d' Abydos, par P. Pierret. Revite 
Archeologique, vol. xix. p. 273. 

2 M. Mariette, in his great work on Abydos, has argued that Rameses II 
was designated during the lifetime of his father by a cartouche signifying 
only Ra-User-Ma ; and that he did not take the additional Setp-en-Ita till 
after the death of Seti I. The Louvre, however, contains a fragment of 
bas-relief representing the infant Rameses with tlie full title of his later 
years. This important fragment is thus described by M. Paul Pierret: 
" Ramses II enfant, represente assis sur le signe des montagnes du : c'est 
une assimilation au soleil levant lorsqu'il emerge a I'horizon celeste. II 
porte la main gauche a sa bouche, en signe d'enfance. La main droite 
peud sur les genoux. II est vetu d'une longue robe. La tresse de I'enfance 
pend sur son epaule. Un diademe relie ses cheveux, et un uraeus se dresse 
sur son front. Voici la traduction de la courte legende qui accompagne 
cette representation. ' Le roi de la Haute et de la Basse Egypte, maitre des 
deux pays, Ra-User-Ma Setp-en-Ra, vivificateur, eternel comme le soleil.' " 
Catalogue de la Salle Hlstoriqiie. P. Pierret. Paris, 1873, p. 8. 

M. Maspero is of opinion that this one fragment establishes the disputed 
fact of his actual sovereignty from early childhood, and so disposes of the 
entire question. See L'Inscription dedieatoire du Temple d' Abydos, suivi 
dhinEssaisurlajeunessedeSesostris, G. Maspero. 4° Paris, 1867. See 
also chap. viii. (footnote), p. 140. 




Statue qf Ramests. 






E AMESES THE GREAT. 265 

father, is now quite certain. That he should, as a boy, have 
designed public buildings and superintended their construc- 
tion is extremely probable. The office was one which miglit 
well have been discharged by a crown-prince who delighted 
in architecture, and made it his peculiar study. It was, in 
fact, a very noble office — an office which from the earliest 
days of the ancient Empire had constantly been confided to 
princes of the royal blood ; ^ but it carried with it no evi- 
dence of sovereignty. The presumption, therefore, would 
be that the stela of Dakkeh (dating as it does from the 
third year of the sol-e reign of Rameses II) alludes to a time 
long since past, when the king as a boy held office under his 
father. 

The same inscription, as we have already seen, makes 
reference to the victorious campaign in the South. Rameses 
is addressed as " the bull powerful against Ethiopia ; the 
griffin furious against the negroes ; " and that the events 
hereby alluded to must have taken place during the first three 
years of his sole reign is proved by the date of the tablet. 
The great dedicatory inscription of Abydos shows, in fact, 
that Rameses II was prosecuting a campaign in Ethiopia at 
the time when he received intelligence of the death of his 
father, and that he came down the Nile, northwards, in order, 
probably, to be crowned at Thebes.^ 

Now the famous sculptures of the commemorative chapel 
at Bay t-el- Welly relate expressly to the events of this expe- 
dition ; and as they are executed in that refined and delicate 
style which especially characterises the bas-relief work of 
Gournah, of Abydos, of all those buildings which were either 
erected by Seti the First, or begun by Seti and finished during 
the early years of Rameses II, I venture to think we may 
regard them as contemporary, or very nearly contemporary, 
with the scenes they represent. In any case, it is reasonable 
to conclude that the artists employed on the work would know 
something about the events and persons delineated, and that 
they would be guilty of no glaring inaccuracies. 

All doubt as to whether the dates refer to the associated 
reigns of Seti and Rameses, or to the sole reign of the latter, 
vanish, however, when in these same sculptures^ we find the 

^ " Le metier d'architecte se trouvait confie aux plus hauts dignitalres 
de la cour pharaonique. Les architectes du roi, les Murket, se recrutaient 
assez souvent parmi le nombredes princes." Histoire d'Egypte : Brugsch. 
Second edition, 1875, chap. v. p. 34. 

■■2 See L' Inscription dedicatoire du Temple d Abydos, etc., by G. Maspeko. 

3 Sae Rosellini, Monumenti Storici, pi. Ixxi. 



266 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

conqueror accompanied by his son, Prince Amenherkhopeshef, 
Avho is of an age not only to bear his part in the field, but after- 
wards to conduct an important ceremony of state on the occa- 
sion of the submission and tribute-offering of the Ethiopian 
commander. Such is the unmistakable evidence of the bas- 
reliefs at Bayt-el- Welly, as those who cannot go to Bayt-el- 
Welly may see and judge for themselves by means of the 
admirable casts of these great tableaux which line the walls 
of the Second Egyptian Room at the British Museum. To 
explain away Prince Amenherkhopeshef would be difficult. 
We are accustomed to a certain amount of courtly exaggera- 
tion on the part of these who record with pen or pencil the 
great deeds of the Pharaohs. We expect to see the king 
always young, always beautiful, always victorious. It seems 
only right and natural that he should be never less than 
twenty, and sometimes more than sixty, feet in height. But 
that any flatterer should go so far as to credit a lad of thirteen 
with a son at least as old as himself is surely quite incred- 
ible. 

Lastly, there is the evidence of the Bible. 

Joseph being dead and the Israelites established in Egypt, 
there comes to the throne a Pharaoh who takes alarm at the 
increase of this alien race, and who seeks to check their too 
rapid multiplication. He not only oppresses the foreigners, 
but ordains that every male infant born to them in their bond- 
age shall be cast into the river. This Pharaoh is now uni- 
versally believed to be Rameses II. Then comes the old, 
sweet, familiar Bible story that we know so well. Moses is 
born, cast adrift in the ark of bulrushes, and rescued by the 
King's daughter. He becomes to her "as a son." Although 
no dates are given, it is clear that the new Pharaoh has not 
been long upon the throne when these events happen. It 
is equally clear that he is no mere youth. He is old in 
the uses of state-craft ; and he is the father of a princess 
of whom it is difficult to suppose that she was herself an 
infant. 

On the whole, then, we can but conclude that Rameses II, 
though born a King, was not merely grown to manhood, but 
wedded, and the father of children already past the period 
of infancy, before he succeeded to the sole exercise of sover- 
eign power. This is, at all events, the view taken by Pro- 
fessor Maspero, who expressly says, in the latest edition of 
his Histoire Ancienne, " that Rameses II, when he received 
news of the death of his father, was then in the prime of 



B AMESES THE GREAT. 267 

life, and surrounded by a large family, some of whom were 
of an age to fight under his own command." ^ 

Brugsch places the birth of Moses in the sixth year of the 
reign of Rameses 11.^ This may very well be. The four- 
score years that elapsed between that time and the time of 
the Exodus correspond with sufficient exactness to the chro- 
nological data furnished by the monuments. Moses would thus 
see out the sixty-one remaining years of the King's long life, 
and release the Israelites from bondage towards the close 
of the reign of Menepthah,^ who sat for about twenty years 
on the throne of his fathers. The correspondence of dates 
this time leaves notliing to be desired. 

The Sesostris of Diodorus Si cuius went blind, and died by 
his own hand ; which act, says the historian, as it conformed 
to the glory of his life, was greatly admired by his people. 
We are here evidently in the region of pure fable. Suicide 
was by no means an Egyptian, but a classical virtue. Just 
as the Greeks hated age, the Egyptians reverenced it; and it 
may be doubted whether a people who seem always to have 
passionately desired length of days, would have seen any- 
thing to admire in a wilful shortening of that most precious 
gift of the gods. With the one exception of Cleopatra — 

1 " A la nouvelle de la mort de son pere, Ramses II desormais seul rol, 
quitta I'Ethiopie et ceignit la couronne a Thebes. II etait alors dans la 
plenitude de ses forces, et avait autour de lui un grand nombre d'enfants, 
dont quelques-uns etaient assez ages pour combattre sous ses ordres." Hist. 
Anclenne des Pevples de V Orient, par G. Maspero. Chap. v. p. 220. 4""° 
edition, 1886. 

2 " Comme Ramses II regna G6 ans, le regne de son successeur sous 
lequel la sortie des Juifs cut lieu, embrassa la duree de 20 ans ; et comme 
Mo"ise avait I'age de 80 ans au temps de la sortie, il en rf^sulte evidemment 
que les enfants d'Israel quitterent I'Egypte une des ces dernieres six an- 
nees du regne de Menepthah ; c'est a dire entre 1327 et 1321 avant I'ere 
chretienne. Si nous admettons que ce pharaon perit dans la mer, selon le 
rapport biblique, Mo'ise sera ne 80 ans avant 1321, ou 1401 avant J. Chr., 
la sixieme annee du regne de Ramses II."— Cliap. viii. p. 157. Hist. 
d'Ec/ypte: Brugsch. First edition, Leipzig, 1859. 

* if the Exodus took place, however, during the opening years of the 
reign of Menepthah, it becomes necessary either to remove the birth of 
Moses to a correspondingly earlier date, or to accept the amendment of 
Bunsen, who says " we can hardly take literally the statement as to the age 
of Moses at the Exodus, tioice over forty years." Forty years is the mode of 
expressing a generation, from thirty to thirty-three years. Egypt's Place 
in Universal History: BvtiSE'N. Lond. 1859. Vol. iii. p. 184. That Menep- 
thah did not himself perish with his host, seems certain. The final op- 
pression of the Hebrews and the miracles of Moses, as narrated in tlie 
Bible, give one the impression of having all happened within a compai-a- 
tively short space of time ; and cannot have extended over a period of 
twenty years. Neither is it stated that Pharaoh perished. The tomb of 
Menepthah, in fact, is found in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings 
(Tomb, No. 8). 



268 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the death of Nitocris the rosy-cheeked being also of Greek/ 
and therefore questionable, origin — no Egyptian sovereign 
is known to have committed suicide; and even Cleopatra, 
who was half Greek by birth, must have been influenced to 
the act by Greek and Roman example. Dismissing, then, 
altogether this legend of his blindness and self-slaughter, it 
must be admitted that of the death of Rameses II we know 
nothing certain. 

Such are, very briefly, the leading facts of the history of 
this famous Pharaoh, Exhaustively treated, they would 
expand into a volume. Even then, however, one would ask, 
and ask in vain, what manner of man he was. Every at- 
tempt to evolve his personal character from these scanty data, 
is in fact a mere exercise of fancy. ^ That he was personally 
valiant may be gathered, with due reservation, from the 
poem of Pentaur ; and that he was not unmerciful is shown 
in the extradition clause of the Khetan treaty. His pride was 
evidently boundless. Every temple which he erected was a 
monument to his own glory; every colossus was a trophy; 
every inscription a paean of self-praise. At Abou Simbel, at 
Derr, at Gerf Hossayn, he seated his own image in the sanc- 
tuary among the images of the gods.^ There are even in- 
stances in which he is depicted under the twofold aspect of 
royalty and divinity — Rameses the Pharaoh burning in- 
cense before Rameses the Deity. 

For the rest, it is safe to conclude that he was neither bet- 
ter nor worse than the general run of Oriental despots — that 
he was ruthless in war, prodigal in peace, rapacious of booty, 

1 Herodotus, Bk. ii. 

2 Roselliiii, for instance, carries hero-worship to its extreme limit when 
he not only states that Rameses tlie Great had, hy his conquests, filled 
Egypt with luxuries that contributed alike to the graces of every-day life 
and the security of the state, but (accepting as sober fact the complimentary 
language of a triumphal tablet) adds that " universal peace even secured to 
him the love of the vanquished " (I'universal pace assicurata dall' amore dei 
vinti stessi pel Faraone). — Mon. Storici, vol. iii. part ii. p. 294. Bunsen, 
equally prejudiced in the opposite direction, can see no trait of magnanimity 
or goodness in one whom he loves to depict as " an unbridled despot, who 
took advantage of a reign of almost unparalleled length, and of the acqui- 
sitions of his father and ancestors, in order to torment his own subjects and 
strangers to the utmost of his power, and to employ them as instruments of 
his passion for war and building." Egypt's Place in Universal History: 
Bunsen. Vol. iii. bk. iv. part ii. p. 184.' 

3 " Souvent il s'introduit lui-meme dans les triades divines auxquelles 
il dedie les temples. Le soleil de liamses Meiamoun qu'on apercjoit sur leur 
murailles, n'est autre chose que le roi lui-meme deifie de son vivant." 
Notice des Monuments Eqyptiennes au Mus^e du Louvre. De Rouge; 
Paris, 1875, p. 20. 



B AMESES THE GREAT. 269 

and unsparing in the exercise of almost boundless power. 
Such pride and such despotism were, however, in strict ac- 
cordance with immemorial precedent, and with the temper of 
the age in which he lived. The Egyptians would seem, be- 
yond all doubt, to liave believed that their King was always, 
in some sense, divine. They wrote hymns ^ and offered up 
prayers to him, and regarded him as the living representative 
of Deity. His princes and ministers habitually addressed 
him in the language of worship. Even his wives, who ought 
to have known better, are represented in the performance of 
acts of religious adoration before him. What wonder, then, 
if the man so deified believed himself a god ? 

1 See Hymn to Pharaoh (Menepthah) translated by C. W. Goodwin, 
M.A. Records of the Past, vol. vi. p. 101. 



270 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ABOU SIMBEL. 

We came to Abou Simbel on the night of the 31st of Jan- 
uary, and we left at sunset on the 18th of February. Of 
these eighteen clear clays, we spent fourteen at the foot of 
the rock of the Great Temple, called in the old Egyptian 
tongue the Rock of Abshek. The remaining four (taken at 
the end of the first week and the beginning of the second) 
were passed in the excursion to Wady-Halfeh and back. By 
thus dividing the time, our long sojourn Avas made less monot- 
onous for those who had no especial work to do. 

Meanwhile, it was wonderful to wake every morning close 
under the steep bank, and, without lifting one's head from 
the pillow, to see that row of giant faces so close against the 
sky. They showed unearthly enough by moonlight ; but not 
half so unearthly as in the grey of dawn. At that hour, the 
most solemn of the twenty-four, they wore a fixed and fatal 
look that was little less than appalling. As the sky Avarmed, 
this awful look was succeeded by a flush that mounted and 
deepened like the rising flush of life. For a moment they 
seemed to glow — to smile — to be transfigured. Then came 
a flash, as of thought itself. It was the flrst instantaneous 
flash of the risen sun. It lasted less than a second. It was 
gone almost before one could say that it was there. The 
next moment, mountain, river, and sky were distinct in the 
steady light of day ; and the colossi — mere colossi now — 
sat serene and stony in the open sunshine. 

Every morning I waked in time to witness that daily mira- 
cle. Every morning I saw those awful brethren pass from 
death to life, from life to sculptured stone. I brought my- 
self almost to believe at last that there must sooner or later 
come some one sunrise when the ancient charm would snap 
asunder, and the giants must arise and speak. 

Stupendous as they are, nothing is more difficult than to 
see the colossi properly. Standing between the rock and 
the river, one is too near ; stationed on the island opposite, 



ABOU SIM BEL. 271 

one is too far off ; while from the sand-slope only a side-view 
is obtainable. Hence, for want of a fitting standpoint, many 
travellers have seen nothing bnt deformity in the most per- 
fect face handed down to us by Egyptian art. One recog- 
nises in it the negro, and one the Mongolian tj'^pe ; ^ while 
another admires the fidelity with which "the Nubian char- 
acteristics " have been seized. 

Yet, in truth, the head of the young Augustus is not cast 
in a loftier mould. These statues are portraits — portraits 
of the same man four times repeated ; and that man is Rame- 
ses the Great. 

Now Rameses the Great, if he was as much like his por- 
traits as his portraits are like each other, must have been 
one of the handsomest men, not only of his own day, but of 
all history. Wheresoever we meet with him, whether in 
the fallen colossus at Memphis, or in the syenite torso of 
the British Museum, or among the innumerable bas-reliefs 
of Thebes, Abydos, Gournah, and Bayt-el- Welly, his features 
(though bearing in some instances the impress of youth and 
in others of maturity) are always the same. The face is oval ; 
the eyes are long, prominent, and heavy-lidded ; the nose is 
slightly aquiline and characteristically depressed at the tip ; 
the nostrils are open and sensitive ; the 
under lip projects ; the chin is short and 
square. 

Here, for instance, is an outline from a 
bas-relief at Bayt-el- Welly. The subject is 
commemorative of the King's first cam- 
paign. A beardless youth tired with the 
rage of battle, he clutches a captive by the 
hair and lifts his mace to slay. In this 
delicate and Dantesque face which lacks as yet the fulness 
and repose of the later portraits, we recognise all the dis- 
tinctive traits of the older Rameses. 

1 The late Vicomte E. tie Rouge, in a letter to M. Guigniaut on the dis- 
coveries at Tanis, believes that he detects the Semitic type in the portraits 
of Rameses II and Seti I ; and even conjectures that the Pharaohs of the 
XlXth Dynasty may have descended from Hyksos ancestors: " L'origine 




la reporter vers la Basse Egypte. Nous savions meme que Ramses II avait 
epouse' une fille du prince de Khet, quand le traite' de I'an 22 eut ramene la 
paix entre les deux pays. Le profil tres-de'cidement semitique de Se'ti et de 
Ramses se distinguait nettement des figures ordinaires de nos Pharaons 
Tliebains." (See Rev^ie Archeolof/iqve, vol. ix. a.d. 1864.) In the course 
of the same letter, M. de Roug^ adverts to the magnificent restoration of 





272 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Here, again, is a sketch from Abydos, in which the king, 
although he has not yet ceased to wear the side-lock of youth, 
is seen with a boyish beard, and looks 
^ some three or four years older than in the 
pi-evious portrait. 

It is interesting to compare these heads 
with the accompanying prohle of one of 
the caryatid colossi inside the great Tem- 
ple of Abou Simbel ; and all three with 
one of the giant portraits of the fa9ade. 
This last, whether regarded as a marvel of size 
or of portraiture, is the chef-d'oeuvre of Egyptian 
sculpture. We here see the great king in his 
prime. His features are identical with those of 
the head at Bayt-el- Welly ; but the contours are 
more amply tilled in, and the expression is al- 
together changed. The man is full fifteen or 
twenty years older. He has outlived that rage 
of early youth. He is no longer impulsive, but 
implacable. A godlike serenity, an almost super- 
human pride, an immutable will, breathe from 
the sculptured stone. He has learned to believe his prowess 
irresistible, and himself almost divine. If he now raised 
his arm to slay, it would be with the stern placidity of a 
destroying angel. 

The annexed woodcut gives the profile of the southern- 
most colossus, which is the only perfect, or very nearly per- 
fect, one of tlie four. The original can be correctly seen 
from but one point of view ; and that point is where the 
sandslope meets the northern buttress of the fa9ade, at a 
level just parallel with the beards of the statues. It was 
thence that the present outline was taken. The sandslope 
is steep, and loose, and hot to the feet. More disagreeable 
climbing it would be hard to find even in Nubia ; but no travel- 
ler who refuses to encounter this small hardship need believe 
that he has seen the faces of the colossi. 

Viewed from below, this beautiful portrait is foreshortened 
out of all proportion. It looks unduly wide from ear to ear, 

the Temple of Sutech at Tanis (San) by Rameses II, and to the curious fact 
that the God is there represented with the peculiar head-dress worn else- 
where by the Prince of Kheta. 

It is to be remembered, however, that the patron deity of Rameses II 
was Amen-Ra. His homage of Sutech (which might possibly have been a 
concession to his Khetan wife) seems to have been confined almost exclu- 
sively to Tanis, where Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ra may be supposed to have resided. 



ABOU SIMBEL. 



273 




PKOFILE OF RAMESES II. 

(From the Southernmost Colossus ; Abou Simbel.) 



274 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

while the lips and the lower part of the nose show relatively 
larger than the rest of the features. The same may be said 
of the great cast in the British Museum. Cooped up at the 
end of a narrow corridor and lifted not more than fifteen 
feet above the ground, it is carefully placed so as to be 
wrong from every point of view and shown to the greatest 
possible disadvantage. 

The artists who wrought the original statues were, how- 
ever, embarrassed by no difficulties of focus, daunted by no 
difficulties of scale. Giants themselves, they summoned 
these giants from out the solid rock, and endowed them with 
superhuman strength and beauty. They sought no quarried 
blocks of syenite or granite for their work. They fashioned 
no models of clay. They took a mountain, and fell upon it 
like Titans, and hollowed and carved it as though it were a 
cherry-stone, and left it for the feebler men of after-ages to 
marvel at forever. One great hall and fifteen spacious 
chambers they hewed out from the heart of it; then smoothed 
the rugged precipice towards the river, and cut four huge 
statues with their faces to the sunrise, two to the right and 
two to the left of the doorway, there to keep watch to the 
end of time. 

These tremendous warders sit sixty-six feet high, without 
the platform under their feet. They measure across the 
chest 25 feet and 4 inches ; from the shoulder to the elbow, 
15 feet and 6 inches ; from the inner side of the elbow joint 
to the tip of the middle finger, 15 feet ; and so on, in relative 
proportion. If they stood up, they would tower to a height 
of at least 83 feet, from the soles of their feet to the tops of 
their enormous double-crowns. 

Nothing in Egyptian sculpture is perhaps quite so wonder- 
ful as the way in which these Abou Simbel artists dealt with 
the thousands of tons of material to which they here gave 
human form. Consummate masters of effect, they knew pre- 
cisely what to do, and what to leave undone. These were 
portrait statues ; therefore they finished the heads up to the 
liighest point consistent with their size. But the trunk and 
the lower limbs they regarded from a decorative rather than 
a statuesque point of view. As decoration, it was necessary 
that they should give size and dignity to the fa9ade. Every- 
thing, consequently, was here subordinated to the general 
effect of breadth, of massiveness, of repose. Considei-ed thus, 
the colossi are a triumph of treatment. Side by side they sit, 
placid and majestic, their feet a little apart, their hands rest- 



ABOU SIMBEL. 



275 




276 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

ing on their knees. Shapely though they are, those huge 
legs look scarcely inferior in girth to the great columns of 
Karnak. The articulations of the knee-joiut, the swell of the 
calf, the outline of the peroneus longus are indicated rather 
than developed. The toe-nails and toe-joints are given in 
the same bold and general way ; but the fingers, because only 
the tips of them could be seen from below, are treated en bloc. 

The faces show the same largeness of style. The little 
dimple which gives such sweetness to the corners of the 
mouth, and the tiny depression in the lobe of the ear, are in 
fact circular cavities as large as saucers. 

How far this treatment is consistent with the most perfect 
delicacy and even finesse of execution, may be gathered 
from the sketch. The nose there shown in profile is 3 feet 
and a half in length ; the mouth so delicately curved is about 
the same in width ; even the sensitive nostril, which looks 
ready to expand with the breath of life, exceeds 8 inches in 
length. The ear (which is placed high, and is well detached 
from the head) measures 3 feet and 5 inches from top to tip. 

A recent writer,^ who brings sound practical knowledge to 
bear upon the subject, is of opinion that the Egyptian sculp- 
tors did not even " point " their work beforehand. If so, 
then the marvel is only so much the greater. The men who, 
working in so coarse and friable a material, could not only 
give beauty and finish to heads of this size, but with barbaric 
tools hew them out ab initio from the natural rock, were the 
Michael Angelos of their age. 

It has already been said that the last Rameses to the 
southward is best preserved. His left arm and hand are in- 
jured, and the head of the urseus sculptured on the front of 
the pschent is gone ; but with these exceptions the figure is 
as whole, as fresh in surface, as sharp in detail, as on the day 

1 " L'absence de points fouilUs, la simplification voulue, la restriction des 
details et des ornements a quelques sillons plus ou moins hardis, I'engorge- 
ment de toutes les parties delicates, demontrent que les Egyptiens etaient 
loin d'avoir des procede's et des facilites inconnus." — La Sculpture 
Egyptienne, par Emtle Soldi, p. 48. 

"Un fait qui nous parait avoir du entraver les progres de la sculpture, 
c'est I'habitude proVjable des sculpteursou entrepreneurs egyptiens d'entre- 
prendre le travail a meine sur la pierre, sans avoir prealablement cherche 
le modele en terre glaise, comme on le fait de nos jours. Une fois le 
modele fini, on le moule et on le reproduit mathematiquement definitive. 
Ce procede a toujours ete employe dans les grandes epoques de I'art ; et il 
ne nous a pas semble qu'il ait jamais ete en usage en Egypte." — Ihid. p. 82, 

M. Soldi is also of opinion that the Egyptian sculptors were ignorant 
of many of the most useful tools known to the Greek, Roman, and modern 
sculptors, such as the emery-tube, the diamond-point, etc. etc. 



ABOU SIMBEL. 277 

it was completed. The next is shattered to the waist. His 
head lies at his feet, half buried in sand. The third is nearly 
as perfect as the first ; while the fourth has lost not only the 
whole beard and the greater part of the urseus, but has both 
arms broken away, and a big, cavernous hole in the front of 
the body. From the double-crowns of the two last, the top 
ornament is also missing. It looks a mere knob ; but it 
measures eight feet in height. 

Such an effect does the size of these four figures produce 
on the mind of the spectator, that he scarcely observes the 
fractures they have sustained, I do not remember to have 
even missed the head and body of the shattered one, although 
nothing is left of it above the knees. Those huge legs and feet 
covered with ancient inscriptions,^ some of Greek, some of 
Phoenician origin, tower so high above the heads of those who 
look at them from below, that one scarcely thinks of looking 
higher still. 

The figures are naked to the waist, and clothed in the 
usual striped tunic. On their heads they wear the double- 
crown, and on their necks rich collars of cabochon drops cut 
in very low relief. The feet are bare of sandals, and tlie 
arms of bracelets ; but in the front of the body, just where 
the customary belt and buckle would come, are deep holes in 
the stone, such as might have been made to receive rivets, 
supposing the belts to have been made of bronze or gold. 
On the breast, just below the necklace, and on the upper part 
of each arm, are cut in magnificent ovals, between four and 
five feet in length, the ordinary cartouches of the king. 
These were probably tattooed upon his person in the flesh. 

Some have supposed that these statues were originally 
coloured, and that the colour may have been effaced by the 
ceaseless shifting and blowing of the sand. Yet the drift 

1 On the left leg of this colossus is the famous Greek inscription dis- 
covered by Messrs. Bankes and Salt. It dates from the reign of Psam- 
metichusl, and purports to have been cut by a certain Damearchon, one of 
the 240,000 Egyptian troops of whom it is related by Herodotus (Book ii. 
chaps. 29, 30) that they deserted because they were kept in garrison at 
Syene for three years without being relieved. The inscription, as translated 
by Colonel Leake, is thus given in Rawlinson's Herodotus (vol. ii. p. 37) : 
" King Psamatichus having come to Elephantine, those who were witli 
Psamatichus, the son of Theocles wrote this. They sailed, and came to 
above Kerkis, to where the river rises . . . the Egyptian Amasis. . . . 
The writer is Damearchon the son of Amoebichus, and Pelephus (Peleisos), 
the son of Udamus." The king Psamatichus here named has been 
identified with the Psamtik I of the inscriptions. It was in his reign, and 
not as it has sometimes been supposed, in the reign of Psammetichus II, 
that the great military defection took place. 



278 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

was probably at its highest when Burckhardt discovered the 
place in 1813 ; and on the two heads that were still above the 
surface, he seems to have observed no traces of colour. 
Neither can the keenest eye detect any vestige of that deli- 
cate film of stucco with which the Egyptians invariably pre- 
pared their surface for painting. Perhaps the architects 
were for once content with the natural colour of the sandstone, 
which is here very rich and varied. It happens also that the 
colossi come in a light-coloured vein of the rock, and so sit 
relieved against a darker background. Towards noon, when 
the level of the facade has just passed into shade and the 
sunlight still strikes upon the statues, the effect is quite 
startling. The whole thing, which is then best seen from 
the island, looks like a huge onyx-cameo cut in iiigh relief. 

A statue of E-a,-^ to whom the temple is dedicated, stands 
some twenty feet high in a niche over the doorway, and is 
supported on either side by a bas-relief portrait of the king 
in an attitude of worship. Next above these comes a superb 
hieroglyphic inscription reaching across the whole front ; 
above the inscription, a band of royal cartouches ; above the 
cartouches, a frieze of sitting apes ; .above the apes, last and 
highest, some fragments of a cornice. The height of the 
whole may have been somewhat over a hundred feet. Wher- 
ever it has been possible to introduce them as decoration, we 
see the ovals of the king. Under those sculptured on the 
platforms and over the door, I observed the hieroglyphic 
character ■ ^^__^ which, in conjunction with the sign 
known as ( w/2T^\ \ ^^^ determinative of metals, signi- 
fies gold * (Nub) ; but when represented, as 
here, without the determinative, stands for Nubia, the Land 
of Gold. This addition, which I do not remember to have 
seen elsewhere in connection with the cartouches of Rameses 
11,^ is here used in an heraldic sense, as signifying the sov- 
ereignty of Nubia. 

1 Ra, the principal solar divinity, generally represented with the head 
of a hawk, and the sun-disk on his head. " Ba veut dire /aire, disposer ; 
c'est, en effet, le dieu Ra qui a dispose, organise le monde, dont la matiere 
lui a ete donnee par Ptah." — P. Pierret: Dictionnaire d' Archeologie 
Egyptienne. 

" Ra est une autre des intelligences demiurgiques. Ptah avait cree 
le soleil ; le soleil, a son tour, est le cr^ateitr des etres, animaux et homines. 
II est al'hemisphere superieure ce qu'Osiris est a I'henniisphere inferieure. 
Ra s'incarne a Heliopolis." — A. Maribttb: Notice des Monuments a 
Boulak, p. 123. 

2 An instance occurs, however, in a small inscription sculptured on the 
rocks of the Island of Sehayl in the First Cataract, which records the 
second panegyry of the reign of Rameses II. — See Recveil des Monuments, 
etc. : Brugsch, vol. ii., Plauche Ixxxii., Inscription No. G. 



ABOU SIMBEL. 



279 




280 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The relative position of the two Temples of Abou Simbel 
has been already described — how they are excavated in two 
adjacent mountains and divided by a cataract of sand. The 
front of the small Temple lies parallel to tiie course of the 
Nile, here flowing in a north-easterly direction. The facade 
of the Great Temple is cut in the flank of the mountain, and 
faces due east. Thus the colossi, towering above the shoulder 
of the sand-drift, catch, as it Avere, a side view of the small 
Temple and confront vessels coming up the river. As for the 
sand-drift, it curiously resembles the glacier of the Rhone. 
Ill size, in shape, in position, in all but colour and substance, 
it is the same. Pent in between the rocks at top, it opens 
out like a fan at bottom. In this its inevitable course, it 
slants downward across the facade of the Great Temple. 
For ever descending, drifting, accumulating, it wages the old 
stealthy war; and, unhasting, unresting, labours grain by 
grain to All the hollowed chambers, and bury the great statues, 
and wrap the whole Temple in a winding-sheet of golden sand, 
so that the place thereof shall know it no more. 

It had very nearly come to this when Burckhardt went up 
(a.d. 1813). The top of the doorway was then thirty feet 
below the surface. Whether the sand will ever reach that 
height again, must depend on the energy with which it is 
combated. It can only be cleared as it accumulates. To 
avert it is impossible. Backed by the illimitable wastes of 
the Libyan desert, the supply from above is inexhaustible. 
Come it must ; and come it will, to the end of time. 

The drift rose to tlie lap of the nortliernmost colossus and 
half-way up the legs of the next, when the Philae lay at 
Abou Simbel. The doorway was clear, however, almost to 
the threshold, and the sand inside was not more than two 
feet deep in the first hall. The whole fagade, we were told, 
had been laid bare, and the interior swept and garnished, 
when the Empress of the French, after opening the Suez 
Canal in 1869, went up the Nile as far as the Second Cata- 
ract. By this time, most likely, that yellow carpet lies 
thick and soft in every chamber, and is fast silting up the 
doorway again. 

How well I remember the restless excitement of our first 
day at Abou Simbel ! While the morning was yet cool, the 
Painter and the Writer wandered to and fro, comparing and 
selecting points of view, and superintending the pitching of 
their tents. The Painter planted his on the very brink of 
the bank, face to face with the colossi and the open doorway. 



ABOU SIMBEL. 281 

The Writer perched some forty feet higher on the pitch of 
tlic saridslope; so getting a side view of the facade, and a 
peep of distance looking up the river.^ To fix the tent up 
there was no easy matter. It was only by sinking the tent- 
pole in a hole filled with stones, that it could be trusted to 
stand against the steady push of the north wind, which at 
this season is almost always blowing. 

Meanwhile the travellers from the other dahabeeyahs were 
tramping backwards and forwards between the two Temples ; 
filling the air with laughter, and waking strange echoes in 
the hollow mountains. As the day wore on, however, they 
returned to their boats, which one by one spread their sails 
and bore away for Wady Half eh. 

When they were fairly gone and we had the marvellous 
place all to ourselves, we went to see the Temples. 

The smaller one, though it comes first in the order of sail- 
ing, is generally seen last ; and seen therefore to disadvan- 
tage. To eyes fresh from the " Abode of Ea," the " Abode 
of Hathor" looks less than its actual size; which is in fact 
but little inferior to that of the Temple at Derr. A first 
hall, measuring some 40 feet in length by 21 in width, leads 
to a transverse corridor, two side-chambers, and a sanctuary 
7 feet square, at the upper end of which are the shattered re- 
mains of a cow-headed statue of Hathor. Six square pillars, 
as at Derr, support what, for want of a better word, one 
must call the ceiling of the hall ; though the ceiling is in 
truth the superincumbent mountain. 

In this arrangement, as in the general character of the 
bas-relief sculptures which cover the walls and pillars, there 
is much simplicity, much grace, but nothing particularly 
new. The fa9ade, on the contrary, is a daring innovation. 
To those who have not seen the place the annexed illustra- 
tion is worth pages of description ; and to describe it in 
words only would be difficult. Here the whole front is but 
a frame for six recesses, from each of which a colossal statue, 
erect and life-like, seems to be walking straight out from the 
heart of the mountain. These statues, three to the right 
and three to the left of the doorway, stand thirty feet high, 
and represent Rameses II and ISTefertari, his queen. Muti- 
lated as they are, the male figures are full of spirit, and the 
female figures full of grace. The Queen wears on her head 
the plumes and disk of Hathor. The king is crowned with 
thepschent, and with a fantastic helmet adorned with plumes 

1 Sec p. 275. 



282 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

and horns. They have their children with them ; the Queen 
her daughters, the King his sons — infants of ten feet high, 
whose heads just reach to the parental knee. 

The walls of these six recesses, as they follow the slope of 
the mountain, form massive buttresses, the effect of which is 
wonderfully bold in light and shadow. The doorway gives 
the only instance of a porch that we saw in either Egypt or 
Nubia. The superb hieroglyphs which cover the faces of 
these buttresses and the front of this porch are cut half-a- 
foot deep into the rock, and are so large that they can be 
read from the island in the middle of the river. The tale 
they tell — a tale retold, in many varied turns of old Egyp- 
tian style upon the architraves within — is singular and 
interesting. 

"Rameses, the Strong in Truth, the Beloved of Amen," 
says the outer legend, " made this divine Abode ^ for his 
royal wife, Nefertari, whom he loves." 

The legend within, after enumerating the titles of the 
King, records that "his royal wife who loves him, Nefertari 
the Beloved of Maut, constructed for him this Abode in the 
mountain of the Pure Waters." 

On every pillar, in every act of Avorship pictured on the 
walls, even in the sanctuary, we find the names of Rameses 
and Nefertari ''coupled and inseparable." In this double 
dedication, and in the unwonted tenderness of the style, one 
seems to detect traces of some event, perhaps of some anni- 
versary, the particulars of which are lost for ever. It may 
have been a meeting ; it may have been a parting ; it may 
have been a prayer answered, or a vow fulfilled. We see, at 
all events, that Barneses and Nefertari desired to leave be- 
hind them an imperishable record of the affection which 
united them on earth, and which they hoped would reunite 
them in Amenti. What more do we need to know ? We 
see that the Queen was fair ; ^ that the King was in his 

1 Though dedicated by Rameses to Nefertari, and by Nefertari to Ra- 
meses, this Temple was jjlaced, primarily, under the patronage of Hathor, 
the supreme type of divine maternity. She is represented by Queen Nefer- 
tari, who appears on the facade as the mother of six children, and adorned 
with the attributes of the goddess. A Temple to Hathor would also be, 
from a religious point of view, the fitting pendant to a Temple of Ra. M. 
Mariette, in his Notice des Monuments a Boulak, remarks of Hathor that 
her functions are still but imperfectly known to us. " Peutetre etait-elle 
a Ra ce que Maut est a Ammon, le recipient oil le dieu s'engendre lui- 
meme pour I'eternite." 

2 It is not often that one can say of a female head in an Egyptian wall- 
painting that it is beautiful ; but in these portraits of the Queen, many 



ABOU STMBEL. 283 

prime. We divine the rest ; and the poetry of the place at 
all events is ours. Even in these barren solitudes there is 
wafted to us a breath from the shores of old romance. We 
feel that Love once passed this way, and that the ground is 
still hallowed where lie trod. 

We hurried on to the Great Temple, without waiting to ex- 
amine the lesser one in detail. A solemn twilight reigned 
in the first hall, beyond which all was dark. Eight 
colossi, four to the right and four to the left, stand ranged 
down the centre, bearing the mountain on their heads. 
Their height is twenty-five feet. AVith hands crossed on 
their breasts, they clasp the flail and crook ; emblems of 
majesty and dominion. It is the attitude of Osiris, but 
the face is the face of Rameses II. Seen by this dim light, 
shadowy, mournful, majestic, they look as if they remem- 
bered the past. 

Beyond the first hall lies a second hall supported on four 
square pillars ; beyond this again, a transverse chamber, the 
walls of which are covered with coloured bas-reliefs of vari- 
ous Gods ; last of all, the sanctuary. Here, side by side, sit 
four figures larger than life — Ptah, Amen-Ra, Ra, and Ram- 
eses deified. Before them stands an altar, in shape a trun- 
cated pyramid, cut from the solid rock. Traces of colour yet 
linger on the garments of the statues ; while in the walls on 
either side are holes and grooves such as might have been 
made to receive a screen of metal-work. 

The air in the sanctuary was heavy with an acrid smoke, 
as if the priests had been burning some strange incense and 
were only just gone. For this illusion we were indebted to 
the visitors who had been there before us. They had lit the 

times repeated upon the walls of the first Hall of the Temple of Hathor, 
there is, if not positive beauty according to our western notions, much 
sweetness and much grace. The name of Nefertari means Perfect, Good, 
or Beautiful Companion. That the word " Nefer " should mean both Good 
and Beautiful — in fact, that Beauty and Goodness should be synonymous 
torms — is not merely interesting as it indicates a lofty philosophical stand- 
point, but as it reveals, perhaps, "the latent germ of that doctrine which was 
hereafter to be taught with such brilliant results in the Alexandrian 
Schools. It is remarkable that the word for Truth and Justice {Ma) was 
also one and the same. 

There is often a quaint significance about Egyptian proper names which 
reminds one of the names that came into favour in England under the 
Commonwealth. Take for instance Bak-en-Khonsv, Servant-of-Khons ; 
Pn-ta-amen, fhe Gift of Ammon ; Benpitnefer, GooA.-je2ux; Niih-en Ti^kh, 
Worth-her-Weight-in-GoId (both women's names) ; smA Hor-mes-out'-a-Shu, 
Horus-son-of-the-Eye-of-Shu — which last, as a tolerably long compound, 
may claim relationship with Praise-God Barebones, Hew-Agag-in-Pieces- 
before-the-Lord, etc. etc. 



284 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

place with magnesian wire ; the vapour of which lingers long 

in these nnventilated vaults. 

To settle down then and there to a steady investigation of 
the wall-sculptures was impossible. We did not atteinpt it. 
Wandering from hall to hall, from chamber to chamber ; now 
trusting to the faint gleams that straggled in from without, 
now stumbling along by the liglit of a bunch of candles tied 
to the end of a stick, we preferred to receive those first im- 
pressions of vastness, of mystery, of gloomy magnificence, 
which are the more profound for being somewhat vague and 
general. 

Scenes of war, of triumph, of worship, passed before our 
eyes like the incidents of a panorama. Here the King, borne 
along at full gallop by plumed steeds gorgeously caparisoned, 
draws his mighty bow and attacks a battlemented fortress. 
The besieged, some of whom are transfixed by his tremendous 
arrows, supplicate for mercy. They are a Syrian people, and 
are by some identified with the Northern Hittites. Their 
skin is yellow ; and they wear the long hair and beard, the fil- 
let, the rich robe, fringed cape, and embroidered baldric with 
which we are familiar in the Nineveh sculptures. A man 
driving off cattle in the foreground looks as if lie had stepped 
out of one of the tablets in the British Museum. Eameses 
meanwhile towers, swift and godlike, above the crowd. His 
coursers are of such immortal strain as were the coursers of 
Achilles. His sons, his whole army, chariot and horse fol- 
low headlong at his heels. All is movement and the splen- 
dour of battle. 

Farther on, we see the King returning in state, preceded by 
his prisoners of Avar. Tied together in gangs, they stagger 
as they go, with heads thrown back and hands uplifted. 
These, however, are not Assyrians, but Abyssinians and Nubi- 
ans, so true to the type, so thick-lipped, flat-nosed, and woolly- 
headed, that only the pathos of the expression saves them 
from being ludicrous. It is naturalness pushed to the verge 
of caricature. 

A little farther still, and we find Rameses leading a string 
of these captives into the presence of Amen-Ka, Maut, and 
Khons — Amen-Ra weird and unearthly, with his blue com- 
plexion and towering plumes ; Maut wearing the crown of 
Upper Egypt ; Khons by a subtle touch of flattery depicted 
with the features of the King. Again, to right and left of 
the entrance, Rameses, thrice the size of life, slays a group 
of captives of various nations. To the left Amen-Ra, to the 



ABOU SIM BEL. 285 

right Ra Harmachis/ approve and accept the sacrifice. In 
the second hall we see, as usual, the procession of the sacred 
bark. Ptah, Khem, and Bast, gorgeous in many-coloured 
garments, gleam dimly, like figures in faded tapestry, from 
the walls of the transverse corridor. 

But the wonder of Abou Simbel is the huge subject on the 
north side of the Great Hall. This is a monster battle-piece 
which covers an area of 57 feet and 7 inches in length, by 
25 feet 4 inches in height, and contains over 1100 figures. 
Even the heraldic cornice of cartouches and asps which 
runs round the rest of the ceiling is omitted on this side, so 
that the wall is literally filled with the picture from top to 
bottom. 

Fully to describe this huge design would take many pages. 
It is a picture-gallery in itself. It represents not a single 
action but a whole campaign. It sets before us, with Homeric 
simplicity, the pomp and circumstance of war, the inci- 
dents of camp life, and the accidents of the open field. We 
see the enemy's city with its battlemented towers and triple 
moat ; the besiegers' camp and the pavilion of the king ; the 
march of infantry ; the shock of chariots ; the hand-to-hand 
melee ; the flight of the vanquished ; the triumph of Pharaoh ; 
the bringing in of the prisoners ; the counting of the hands 
of the slain. A great river winds through the picture from 
end to end, and almost surrounds the invested city. The 
king in his chariot pursues a crowd of fugitives along the 
bank. Some are crushed under his wheels ; some plunge into 
the water and are drowned.^ Behind him, a moving wall of 
shields and spears, advances with rhythmic step the serried 
phalanx ; while yonder, where the fight is thickest, we see 
chariots overturned, men dead and dying, and riderless horses 
making for the open. Meanwhile the besieged send out 
mounted scouts, and the country folk drive their cattle to 
the hills. 

A grand frieze of chariots charging at full gallop divides 
the subject lengthwise, and separates the Egyptian camp 
from the field of battle. The camp is square, and enclosed, 
apparently, in a palisade of shields. It occupies less than 
one-sixth part of the picture, and contains about a hundred 
figures. Within this narrow space the artist has brought to- 
gether an astonishing variety of incidents. The horses feed 

1 Ra Harmachis, in Egyptian Har-em-Khou-ti, personifies the sun ris- 
ing upon the eastern horizon. 

2 See chap. viii. pp. 139-140; also chap. xxi. p. 396. 



286 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

in rows from a common manger, or wait their turn and im- 
patiently paw the ground. Some are lying down. One, just 
unharnessed, scampers round the enclosure. Another, mak- 
ing off with the empty chariot at his heels, is intercepted by 
a couple of grooms. Other grooms bring buckets of water 
slung from the shoulders on wooden yokes. A wounded offi- 
cer sits apart, his head resting on his hand ; and an orderly 
comes in haste to bring him news of the battle. Another, 
hurt apparently in the foot, is having the wound dressed by 
a surgeon. Two detachments of infantry, marching out to 
reinforce their comrades in action, are met at the entrance 
to the camp by the royal chariot returning from the field. 
Rameses drives before him some fugitives, who are trampled 
down, seized, and despatched upon the spot. In one corner 
stands a row of objects that look like joints of meat ; and near 
them are a small altar and a tripod brazier. Elsewhere, a 
couple of soldiers, with a big bowl between them, sit on their 
heels and dip their fingers in the mess, precisely as every 
Fellah does to this day. Meanwhile it is clear that Egyp- 
tian discipline was strict, and that the soldier who trans- 
gressed was as abjectly subject to the rule of stick as his 
modern descendant. In no less than three places do we see 
this time-honoured institution in full operation, the superior 
officer energetically flourishing his staff; the private taking 
his punishment with characteristic disrelish. In the middle 
of the camp, watched over by his keeper, lies Rameses' tame 
lion ; while close against the royal pavilion a hostile spy is 
surprised and stabbed by the officer on guard. The pavilion 
itself is very curious. It is evidently not a tent but a build- 
ing, and was probably an extemporaneous construction of 
crude brick. It has four arched doorways, and contains in 
one corner an object like a cabinet, with two sacred hawks 
for supporters. This object, which is in fact almost identical 
with the hieroglyphic emblem used to express a royal pan- 
egyry or festival, stands, no doubt, for the private oratory of 
the King. Five figures kneel before it in adoration. 

To enumerate all or half the points of interest in this 
amazing picture would ask altogether too much space. Even 
to see it, with time at command and all the help that candles 
and magnesian torches can give, is far from easy. The re- 
lief is unusually low, and the surface, having originally been 
covered with stucco, is purposely roughened all over with 
tiny chisel-marks, which painfully confuse the details. "Nor 
is this all. Owing to some kind of saline ooze in that part 



ABOU SIMBEL. 287 

of the rock, the stucco has not only peeled off, but the actual 
surface is injured. It seems to have been eaten away, just 
as iron is eaten by rust. A few patches adhere, however, in 
places, and retain the original colouring. The river is still 
covered with blue and white zigzags, to represent water; 
some of the fighting groups are yet perfect ; and two very 
beautiful royal chariots, one of which is surmounted by a 
richly ornamented parasol-canopy, are as fresh and brilliant 
as ever. 

The horses throughout are excellent. The chariot frieze 
is almost Panathenaic in its effect of multitudinous move- 
ment ; while the horses in the camp of Rameses, for natural- 
ness and variety of treatment, are perhaps the best .that 
Egyptian art has to show. It is worth noting also that a 
horseman, that rara avis, occurs some four or live times in 
different parts of the picture. 

The scene of the campaign is laid in Syria. The river 
of blue and white zigzags is the Orontes ; ^ the city of the 
besieged is Kadesh or Kades ; ^ the enemy are the Kheta. 
The whole is, in fact, a grand picture-epic of the events im- 
mortalised in the poem of Pentaur — that poem which M. de 
Rouge has described as "a sort of Egyptian Iliad." The 
comparison would, however, apply to the picture with 
greater force than it applies to the poem. Pentaur, who 
was in the first place a courtier and- in the second place a 
poet, has sacrificed everything to the prominence of his 
central figure. He is intent upon the glorification of the 
King ; and his poem, which is a mere paean of praise, begins 
and ends with the prowess of Rameses Mer-Amen. If, then, 
it is to be called an Iliad, it is an Iliad from which every- 
thing that does not immediately concern Achilles is left out. 
The picture, on the contrary, though it shows the hero in 
combat and in triumph, and always of colossal proportions, 
yet has space for a host of minor characters. The episodes 
in which these characters appear are essentially Homeric. 
The spy is surprised and slain, as Dolon was slain by 
Ulysses. The men feast, and fight, and are wounded, just 

1 In Egyptian, Aaranatu. 

^ Tn Egjqjtian, Kateshri. "Aujourdhui encore il existe une ville de 
Kades pres d'une courbe de I'Oronte dans le voisiiiage de Homs." Lecons 
de M. de Ronge, Pro/ensees an College de France. See Melanges 
d'Archeologie, Egyp. and Assyr., vol. ii. p. 269. Also a valuable paper, 
entitled " The Campaign of Rameses II against Kadesh," by the Rev. G. 
n. Tomkins, Trans, of the Soc. of Bib. Arch. vol. viii. part '3, 1882. The 
bend of the river is actually given in the bas-reliefs. 



288 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

like the long-haired sons of Achaia ; while their horses, loosed 
from the yoke, eat white barley and oats 

" Hard by tlielr chariots, waiting for the dawn." 

Like Homer, too, the artist of the battle-piece is careful to 
point out the distinguishing traits of tlie various combatants. 
The Kheta go three in a chariot ; the Egyptians only two. 
The Kheta wear a moustache and scalplock ; the Egyptians 
pride themselves on " a clean shave," and cover their bare 
heads with ponderous wigs. The Sardinian contingent cul- 
tivate their own thick hair, whiskers, and mustachios ; and 
their features are distinctly European. They also wear the 
curious helmet, surmounted by a ball and two spikes, by 
which they may always be recognised in the sculptures. 
These Sardinians appear only in the border-frieze, next the. 
floor. The sand had drifted up just at that spot, and only 
the top of one fantastic helmet was visible above the sur- 
face. Not knowing in the least to what this might belong, 
we set the men to scrape away the sand ; and so, quite by 
accident, uncovered the most curious and interesting group 
in the whole picture. The Sardinians ^ (in Egpytian Shar- 
dana) seem to have been naturalised prisoners of war drafted 
into the ranks of the Egpytian army ; and are the first 
European people whose name appears on the monuments. 

There is but one hour in the twenty-four at which it is 
possible to form any idea of the general effect of this vast 
subject; and that is at sunrise. Then only does tlie pure 
day stream in through the doorway, and temper the gloom 
of the side-aisles with light reflected from the sunlit floor. 
The broad divisions of the picture and the distribution of 
the masses may then be dimly seen. The details, however, 
require candle-light, and can only be studied a few inches at 

1 " La legion S'ai'dana de I'armee de Ramses II provenait d'une 
premiere descente de ces peuples en Egypte. ' Les S^ardaina qui etaient 
des prisonniers de sa majeste,' dit expressement le texte de Kamak, au 
commencement du poeme de Pentaur. Les archeologues ont remarque 
la richesse de leur costume et de leurs armures. Les principales pieces 
de leur vetements semblent couvertes de broderies. Leur bouchier est 
une rondache: ils portent une longue et large epee de forme ordinaire, 
mais on remarque aussi dans leurs mains une epee d'une longueur 
demesuree. Le casque des S'ardana est tres caracteristique ; sa forme est 
arrondie, mais il est surmonte d'une tige qui supporte une boule de metal. 
Get ornament est accompagne de deux cornes en forme de croissant. . . . 
Les S'ardana de I'armee Egyptienne ont seiilement des favoris et des 
moustaclies coupes tres courts." — Memoire siir les Attaques Dirige'es contre 
VEgypte, etc. etc. E. De Rouge. Kevue Archeologique , vol. xyi! pp. 90, 91. 



ABOU SI MB EL. 289 

a time. Even so, it is difficult to make out the upper groups 
without the help of a ladder. Salame, mounted on a chair 
and provided with two long sticks lashed together, could 
barely hold his little torch high enough to enable the Writer 
to copy the inscription on the middle tower of the fortress of 
Kadesh. 

It is fine to see the sunrise on the front of the Great 
Temple ; but something still finer takes place on certain 
mornings of the year, in the very heart of the mountain. 
As the sun comes up above the eastern hill-tops, one long, 
level beam strikes through the doorway, pierces the inner 
darkness like an arrow, penetrates to the sanctuary, and falls 
like fire from heaven upon the altar at the feet of the Gods. 

No one who has watched for the coming of that shaft of 
sunlight can doubt that it was a calculated effect, and that 
the excavation was directed at one especial angle in order to 
produce it. In this way Ra, to whom the temple was dedi- 
cated, may be said to have entered in daily, and by a direct 
manifestation of his presence to have approved the sacrifices 
of his worshippers. 

I need scarcely say that we did not see half the wall- 
sculptures or even half the chambers, that first afternoon at 
Abou Simbel. We rambled to and fro, lost in wonder, and 
content to wonder, like rustics at a fair. We had, however, 
ample time to come again and again, and learn it all by 
heart. The Writer went in constantly, and at all hours ; 
but most frequently at the end of the day's sketching, when 
the rest were walking or boating in the cool of the late 
afternoon. 

It is a wonderful place to be alone in — a place in which 
the very darkness and silence are old, and in which Time 
himself seems to have fallen asleep. Wandering to and fro 
among these sculptured halls, like a shade among shadows, 
one seems to have left the world behind ; to have done with 
the teachings of the present ; to belong one's self to the past. 
The very Gods assert their ancient influence over those who 
question them in solitude. Seen in the fast-deepening gloom 
of evening, they look instinct with supernatural life. There 
were times when I should scarcely have been surprised to 
hear them speak — to see them rise from their painted 
thrones and come down from the walls. There were times 
when I felt I believed in them. 

There was something so weird and awful about the place, 
and it became so much more weird and awful the farther one 



290 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

went in, that I rarely ventured beyond the first hall when 
quite alone. One afternoon, however, when it was a little 
earlier, and therefore a little lighter, than usual, I went to 
the very end, and sat at the feet of the Gods in the sanctu- 
ary. All at once (I cannot tell why, for my thoughts just 
then were far away) it flashed upon me that a whole moun- 
tain hung — ready, perhaps, to cave in — above my head. 
Seized by a sudden panic such as one feels in dreams, I tried 
to run ; but my feet dragged, and the floor seemed to sink 
under them. I felt I could not have called for help, though 
it liad been to save my life. It is unnecessary, perhaps, to 
add that the mountain did not cave in, and that I had my 
fright for nothing. It would have been a grand way of 
dying, all the same ; and a still grander way of being buried. 

My visits to the Great Temple were not always so dra- 
matic. I sometimes took Salame, who smoked cigarettes when 
not on active duty, or held a candle while I sketched patterns 
of cornices, head-dresses of Kings and Gods, designs of neck- 
laces and bracelets, heads of captives, and the like. Some- 
times we explored the side-chambers. Of these there are 
eight ; pitch-dark, and excavated at all kinds of angles. Two 
or three are surrounded by stone benches cut in the rock ; 
and in one the hieroglyphic inscriptions are part cut, part 
sketched in black and left unfinished. As this temple is 
entirely the work of Rameses II, and betrays no sign of 
having been added to by any of his successors, these evi- 
dences of incompleteness would seem to show that the King 
died before the work was ended. 

I was always under the impression that there were secret 
places yet undiscovered in these dark chambers, and Salame 
and I were always looking for them. At Denderah, at Edfii, 
at Medinet Habu, at Philae,^ there have been found crypts 
in the thickness of the walls and recesses under the pave- 
ments, for the safe-keeping of treasure in time of danger. 
The rockcut temples must also have had their hiding-places ; 
and these would doubtless take the form of concealed cells 
in the walls, or under the floors, of the side-chambers. 

To come out from these black holes into the twilight of 
the Great Hall and see the landscape set, as it were, in the 
ebon frame of the doorway, was alone worth the journey to 
Abou Simbel. The sun being at such times in the west, the 

1 A rich treasure of gold and silver rings was found by Ferlini, in 1834, 
immured in the wall of one of the pyramids of Meroe, in Upper Nubia. 
See Lp.psiiis's Letters, translated by L. and J. Horner, Bohn, 1853, p. 151. 



ABOU SIMBEL. 291 

river, the yellow sand-island, the palms and tamarisks oppo- 
site, and the monntains of the eastern desert, were all flooded 
with, a glory of light and colour to which no pen or pencil 
could possibly do justice. Not even the mountains of Moab 
in Holinan Hunt's " Scapegoat " were so warm with rose 
and gold. 

Thus our days passed at Abou Simbel ; the workers work- 
ing ; the idlers idling ; the strangers from the outer world 
now and then coming and going. The lieat on shore was 
great, especially in the sketching-tents ; but the north breeze 
blew steadily every day from about an hour after sunrise till 
an hour before sunset, and on board the dahabeeyah it was 
always cool. 

The Happy Couple took advantage of this good wind to 
do a good deal of boating, and by judiciously timing their 
excursions, contrived to use the tail of the day's breeze for 
their trip out, and the strong arms of four good rowers to 
bring them back again. In this way they managed to see 
the little rock-cut Temple of Ferayg, which the rest of us 
unfortunately missed. On another occasion they paid a visit 
to a certain Sheykh who lived at a village about two miles 
south of Abou Simbel. He was a great man, as Nubian 
magnates go. His name was Hassan Ebn Rashwan el Kashef, 
and he was a grandson of that same old Hassan Kashef who 
was vice-regent of Nubia in the days of Burckhardt and 
Belzoni. He received our Happy Couple with distinguished 
hospitality, killed a sheep in their honour, and entertained 
theni for more than three hours. The meal consisted of an 
endless succession of dishes, all of which, like that bugbear 
of our childhood, the hated Air with Variations, went on 
repeating the same theme under a multitude of disguises ; 
and, whether roast, boiled, stewed or minced, served on 
skewers, smothered in rice, or drowned in sour milk, were 
always mutton an fond. 

We now despaired of ever seeing a crocodile ; and but for 
a trail that our men discovered on the island opposite, we 
should almost have ceased to believe that there were croco- 
diles in Egypt. The marks were quite fresh when we went 
to look at them. The creature had been basking high and 
dry in the sun, and this was the point at which he had gone 
down again to the river. The damp sand at the water's edge 
had taken the mould of his huge fleshy paws, and even of 
the jointed armour of his tail, though this last impression 
was somewhat blurred by the final rush with which he 



292 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

had taken to the water. I doubt if Robinson Crusoe, when 
he saw the famous footprint on the shore, was more excited 
than we of the Philse at sight of this genuine and undeniable 
trail. 

As for the Idle Man, he flew at once to arms and made 
ready for the fray. He caused a shallow grave to be dug 
for himself a few yards from the spot ; then went and lay in 
it for hours together, morning after morning, under the full 
blaze of the sun, — flat, patient, alert, — with his gun ready 
cocked, and a Pall Hall Budget up his back. It was not his 
fault if he narrowly escaped sunstroke, and had his labour 
for his reward. That crocodile was too clever for him, and 
took good care never to come back. 

Our sailors, meanwhile, though well pleased with an 
occasional holiday, began to find Abou Simbel monotonous. 
As long as the Bagstones stayed, the two crews met every 
evening to smoke, and dance, and sing their quaint rounde- 
lays together. But when rumours came of wonderful things 
already done this winter above Wady Halfeh — rumours 
that represented the Second Cataract as a populous solitude 
of crocodiles — then our faithful consort slipped aAvay one 
morning before sunrise, and the Philae was left companion- 
less. 

At this juncture, seeing that the men's time hung heavy 
on their hands, our Painter conceived the idea of setting 
them to clean the face of the northernmost Colossus, still 
disfigured by the plaster left on it when the great cast ^ was 
taken by Mr. Hay more than half a century before. This 

1 This cast, the property of the British Museum, is placed over a door 
leading to the library at the end of the northern Vestibule, opposite the 
staircase. I was informed by the late Mr. Bonomi that the mould was 
made by Mr. Hay, who had with him an Italian assistant picked up in 
Cairo. They took with them some barrels of plaster and a couple of 
ladders, and contrived, with such spars and poles as belonged to the 
dahabeeyah, to erect a scaffolding and a matted shelter for the plasterman. 
The Colossus was at this time buried up to its chin in sand, which made 
their task so much the easier. When the mould of the head was brought 
to England, it was sent to Mr. Bonomi' s studio, together with a mould of 
the head of the Colossus at Mitrahenny, a mould of the apex of the fallen 
obelisk at Karnak, and moulds of the wall-sculptures at Bayt-el- Welly. 
Mr. Bonomi superintended the casting and placing of all these in the 
Museum about three years after the moulds were made. This was at the 
time when Mr. Hawkins held the post of Keeper of Antiquities. I men- 
tion these details, not simply because they have a special interest for all 
who are acquainted with Abou Simbel, but because a good deal of misap- 
prehension has prevailed on the subject, some travellers attributing the 
disfigurement of the head to Lepsius, others to the Crystal Palace Com- 
pany, and so forth. Even so careful a writer as the late Miss Martineau 
ascribes it, on hearsay, to ChampoUion. 



/ SIMBEL. 



293 



happy thought was promptly carried into effect. A scaffold- 
ing of spars and oars was at once improvised, and the men, 
delighted as children at play, were soon swarming all over 
the huge head, just as the carvers may have swarmed over 
it in the days when Rameses was king. 

All they had to do was to remove any small lumps that 




CLEANING THE COLOSSUS. 



might yet adhere to the surface, and then tint the white 
patches with coffee. This they did with bits of sponge tied 
to the ends of sticks ; but Reis Hassan, as a mark of dignity, 
had one of the Painter's old brushes, of Avhich he was im- 
niensely proud. 

It took them three afternoons to complete the job; and 
we were all sorry when it came to an end. To see Reis 



294 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Hassan artistically touching up a gigantic nose almost as long 
as himself ; Riskalli and the cook-boy staggering to and fro 
with relays of coffee, brewed " thick and slab " for the pur- 
pose ; Salame perched cross-legged, like some complacent 
imp, on the towering rim of the great pschent overhead ; the 
rest chattering and skipping about the scaffolding like mon- 
keys, was, I will venture to say, a sight more comic than has 
ever been seen at Abou Simbel before or since. 

Rameses' appetite for coffee was prodigious. He consumed 
I know not how many gallons a day. Our cook stood aghast 
at the demand made upon his stores. Never before had he 
been called upon to provide for a guest whose mouth meas- 
ured three feet and a half in width. 

Still, the result justified the expenditure. The coffee 
proved a capital match for the sandstone ; and though it was 
not possible wholly to restore the uniformity of the original 
surface, we at least succeeded in obliterating those ghastly 
splotches, which for so many years have marred this beauti- 
ful face as with the unsightliness of leprosy. 

What with boating, fishing, lying in wait for crocodiles, 
cleaning the colossus, and filling reams of thin letter paper to 
friends at home, we got through the first week quickly enough 
— the Painter and the Writer working hard, meanwhile, in 
their respective ways ; the Painter on his big canvas in front 
of the Temple ; the Writer shifting her little tent as she 
listed. 

Now, although the most delightful occupation in life is 
undoubtedly sketching, it must be admitted that the sketcher 
at Abou Simbel works under difficulties. Foremost among 
these comes the difficulty of position. The great Temple 
stands within about twenty-five yards of the brink of the 
bank, and the lesser Temple within as many feet; so that to 
get far enough from one's subject is simply impossible. The 
present Writer sketched the small Temple from the deck of 
the dahabeeyah ; there being no point of view obtainable on 
shore. 

Next comes the difficulty of colour. Everything, except 
the sky and the river, is yellow — yellow, that is to say, 
'■' with a difference ; " yellow ranging through every gradation 
of orange, maize, apricot, gold, and buff. The mountains are 
sandstone ; the Temples are sandstone ; the sandslope is 
powdered sandstone from the sandstone desert. In all 
these objects, the scale of colour is necessarily the same. 
Even the shadows, glowing with reflected light, give back 



ABOU SIMBEL. 295 

tempered repetitions of the dominant hue. Hence it follows 
that he who strives, however humbly, to reproduce the facts 
of the scene before him, is compelled, bon gre, mal gre, to 
execute what some of our young painters would now-a-days 
call a Symphony in Yellow. 

Lastly, there are the minor inconveniences of sun, sand, 
wind, and flies. The whole place radiates heat, and seems 
almost to radiate light. The glare from above and the glare 
from below are alike intolerable. Dazzled, blinded, unable to 
even look at his subject without the aid of smoke-coloured 
glasses, the sketcher whose tent is pitched upon the sand- 
slope over against the great Temple enjoys a foretaste of 
cremation. 

When the wind blows from the north (which at this time 
of the year is almost always) the heat is perhaps less distress- 
ing, but the sand is maddening. It fills your hair, your eyes, 
your water-bottles ; silts up your colour-box ; dries into your 
skies ; and reduces your Chinese white to a gritty paste the 
colour of salad-dressing. As for the flies, they have a morbid 
appetite for water-colours. They follow your wet brush along 
the paper, leave their legs in the yellow ochre, and plunge 
with avidity into every little pool of cobalt as it is mixed 
ready for use. Nothing disagrees with them ; nothing poi- 
sons them — not even olive-green. 

It was a delightful time, however — delightful alike for 
those who worked and those who rested — and these small 
troubles counted for nothing in the scale. Yet it was pleas- 
ant, all the same, to break away for a day or two, and be off 
to Wady Halfeh. 



296 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE SECOND CATARACT. 

A FRESH breeze, a full sail, and the consciousness of a 
holiday well earned, carried us gaily along from Abou Simbel 
to Wady Halfeh. We started late in the afternoon of the 
first day, made about twelve miles before the wind dropped, 
and achieved the remaining twenty-eight miles before noon 
the next day. It was our last trip on the Kile under canvas. 
At Wady Halfeh the Philae was doomed to be dismantled. 
The big sail that had so long been our pride and delight 
would there be taken down, and our good boat, her grace and 
swiftness gone at one fell swoop, would become a mere lum- 
bering barge, more suggestive of civic outings on the Thames 
than of Cleopatra's galley. 

For some way beyond Abou Simbel, the western bank is 
fringed by a long line of volcanic mountains, as much alike 
in height, size, and shape, as a row of martello towers. They 
are divided from one another by a series of perfectly uniform 
sand-drifts; while on the rounded top of each mountain, thick 
as the currants on the top of a certain cake, known to school- 
bo3rs by the endearing name of " black-caps," lies a layer of 
the oddest black stones in the world. Having more than 
once been to the top of the rock of Abshek (which is the first 
large mountain of the chain, and strewn in the same way) we 
recognised the stones, and knew what they were like. In 
colour they are purplish black, tinged here and there with dull 
red. They ring like clinkstone when struck, and in shape 
are most fantastic. L. picked up some like petrified bunches 
of grapes. Others are twisted and writhen like the Vesuvian 
lava of 1871. They lie loose upon the surface, and are of 
all sizes; some being as small as currants, and others as large 
as quartern loaves. Speaking as one having no kind of 
authority, I should say that these stones are unquestionably 
of fiery parentage. One seems to see how, boiling and bub- 
bling in a state of fusion, they must have been suddenly 
checked by contact with some cooler medium. 



THE SECOND CATARACT. 297 

Where the chain ends, about three or four miles above 
Abou Simbel, the view widens, and a host of outlying moun- 
tains are seen scattered over an immense plain reaching for 
miles into the western desert. On the eastern bank, Kalat 
Adda,^ — a huge, rambling Roman citadel, going to solitary 
ruiu on the last Avater-washed precipice to the left — brings 
tlie opposite range to a like end, and abuts on a similar plain, 

1 " A castle, resembling in size and form that of Ibrim ; it bears the 
name of. Kalat Adda; it has been abandoned many years, being entirely 
surrounded by barren rocks. Part of its ancient wall, similar in construc- 
tion to that of Ibrim, still remains. The habitations are built partly of 
stone, and partly of bricks. On the most elevated spot in the small town, 
eight or ten grey granite columns of small dimensions lie on tlie giound, 
with a few capitals near them of clumsy Greek architecture." — Burck- 
hardt's Travels in Nubia, 1819, p. 38. 

In a curious Arabic history of Nubia written in the tentli century a.d. 
by one Abdallah ben Ahmed ben Sola'im of Assiian, fragments of which are 
preserved in the great work of Makrizy, quoted by Burckhardt and E. 
(juatremere (see footnote, p. 216), there occurs the following remarkable 
passage: " In this province (Nubia) is situated the city of Bedjrasch, capi- 
tal or Maris, the fortress of Ibrim, and another place called Adwa, which 
has a port, and is, they say, the birthplace of the sage Lokman and of Dhoul 
Noun. There is to be seen there a magniticent Birbeh." — ( " On y voit un 
Berha magnifique." ) — Memoires Geographiques sitr VEgypte, etc. E. 
QuATREMERE, Faris, 1811 ; vol. ii. p. 8. 

If Adwa and Adda are one and the same, it is possible that in this passage 
we find preserved the only comparatively modern indication of some great 
rock-cut temple, the entrance to which is now entirely covered by the sand. 
It is clear that neither Abou Simbel (which is on the opposite bank, and 
some three or four miles north of Adda) nor Ferayg (which is also some 
way off, and quite a small place) can here be intended. That another tem- 
ple exists somewhere between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh, and is yet 
to be discovered, seems absolutely certain from the tenor of a large stela 
sculptu^-ed on the rock a few paces north of the smaller temple at Abou 
Simbel. This stela, which is one of the most striking and elaborate there, 
represents an Egyptian gateway surmounted by the winged globe, and 
shows Rameses II enthroned, and receiving the homage of a certain Prince 
whose name, as translated by Rosellini, is Rameses-Neniscti-Habai. The 
inscription, which is in sixteen columns and perfectly preserved, records 
the titles and praises of the King, and states how " he hath made a monu- 
mental abode for Horns, his father, Lord of Ha'm, excavating in the bowels 
of the rock of Ha'm to make him a habitation of many ages." We know 
nothing of the Rock of Ha'm (rendered Sciam by Rosellini), but it should 
no doubt be sought somewhere between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh. 
"Qual sito precisamente dinotisi in questo nome di Sciam, io non saprei 
nel presente stato delle cose determinare : credo peraltro secondo varie luoghi 
delle iscrizioni che lo ricordano, che fosse s'tuato sull' una o I'altra sponda 
del Nilo, nel paese compreso tra Wadi-halfa e Ibsambul, o poco oltre. E 
qui dovrebbe trovarsi il nominato speco di Horus, fino al presente occulto a 
noi." — Rosellini, Letterpress to Moiivmenti Storici, vol. iii. part ii. p. 
184. It would hence appear that the Rock of Ha'm is mentioned in other 
inscriptions. 

The distance between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh is only fo'-ty miles, 
and the likely places along the banks are but few. Would not the discov- 
ery of this lost Temple be an enterprise worthier the ambition of tourists, 
than the extermination of such few crocodiles as yet linger north of the 
Second Cataract? 



298 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

also scattered over with detached peaks. The scene here is 
desolately magnificent. A large island covered with palms 
divides the Nile in two branches, each of which looks as 
wide as the whole river. An unbounded distance opens 
away to the silvery horizon. On the banks there is no ver- 
dure ; neither is there any sign of human toil. Nothin'^ 
lives, nothing moves, save the wind and the river. 

Of all the strange peaks we have yet seen, the mountains 
hereabout are the strangest. Alone or in groups, they start 
up here and there from the deserts on both sides, like the 
pieces on a chess-board. They are for the most part conical ; 
but they are not extinct craters, such as are the volcanic cones 
of Korosko and Dakkeh. Seeing how they all rose to about 
the same height, and were alike capped with that mysterious 
coiiche of shining black stones, the Writer could not help 
fancying that, like the isolated Eocher de Corneille and Eocher 
de St. Michel at Puy, they jniglit be but fragments of a rocky 
crust, rent and swept away at some infinitely remote period 
of the world's history, and that the level of their present 
summits might represent perliaps the ancient level of the 
plain. 

As regards form, they are weird enough for the wildest 
geological theories. All taper more or less towards the top. 
One is four-sided, like a pyramid; another, in shape a trun- 
cated cone, looks as if crowned with a pagoda summer-house; 
a third seems to be surrounded by a mosque and cupola; a 
fourth is scooped out in tiers of arches ; a fifth is crowned, 
apparently, with a cairn of piled stones ; and so on with 
variations as endless as they are fantastic. A geologist might 
perhaps account for these caprices by showing how fire, and 
earthquake, and deluge, had here succeeded each other ; and 
how, after being first covered with volcanic stones and then 
split into chasms, the valleys thus opened had by and by been 
traversed by torrents which wore away the softer parts of the 
rock and left the harder standing. 

Some way beyond Kalat Adda, when the Abou Simbel 
range and the palm island have all but vanished in the dis- 
tance, and the lonely peak, called the Mountain of the Sun 
(Gebel esh-Shems), has been left far behind, we come upon a 
new Avonder — namely, upon two groups of scattered tumuli, 
one on the eastern, one on the western bank. Not volcanic 
forms these ; not even accidental forms, if one may venture 
to form an opinion from so far off. They are of various size ; 
some little, some big ; all perfectly round and smooth, and 



THE SECOND CATARACT. 299 

covered with a rich greenish-brown alluvial soil. How did 
tney come there ? Who made them ? What did they con- 
tain ? The Roman ruin close by — the 240,000^ deserters 
who must have passed this Avay — the Egyptian and Ethiopian 
armies that certainly poured their thousands along these very 
banks, and might have fought many a battle on this open 
plain, suggest all kinds of possibilities, and till one's head 
with visions of buried arms, and jewels, and cinerary urns. 
We are more than half-minded to stop the boat and land that 
very moment; but are content on second thoughts with 
promising ourselves that we will at least excavate one of the 
smaller hillocks on our way back. 

And now, the breeze freshening and the dahabeeyah tearing 
gallantly along, we leave the tumuli behind and enter upon a 
still more desolate region, where the mountains recede farther 
than ever, and the course of the river is interrupted by per- 
petual sandbanks. 

On one of these sandbanks, just a few yards above the 
edge of the water, lay a log of drift-wood, apparently a bat- 
tered old palm trunk, with some remnants of broken branches 
yet clinging to it; such an object, in short, as my American 
friends would very properly call a " snag." 

Our pilot leaned forward on the tiller, put his finger to his 
lip, and whispered : — 

" Crocodilo ! " 

The Painter, the Idle Man, the Writer, were all on deck, 
and not one believed him. They had seen too many of these 
snags already, and were not going to let themselves again be 
excited about nothing. 

The pilot pointed to the cabin where L. and the Little Lady 
were indulging in that minor vice called afternoon tea. 

" Sitteh ! " said he, " call Sitteh ! Crocodilo ! " 

We examined the object through our glasses. We laughed 
the pilot to scorn. It was the worst imitation of a crocodile 
that we had yet seen. 

All at once the palm-trunk lifted up its head, cocked its 
tail, found its legs, set off running, wriggling, undulating 
down the slope with incredible rapidity, and was gone before 
we could utter an exclamation. 

We three had a bad time when the other two came up and 
found that we had seen our first crocodile without them. 

A sandbank which we passed next morning was scored all 
over with fresh trails, and looked as if it had been the scene 

> See footnote, p. 277. 



300 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



of a crocodile-parliament. There must have been at least 
twenty or thirty members present at the sitting ; and the 
freshness of the marks showed that they had only just 
dispersed, 

A keen and cutting wind carried us along the last thirty 
miles of our journey. We had supposed that the farther south 
we penetrated, the hotter we should find the climate ; yet 
now, strange to say, we were shivering in seal-skins, under 
the most brilliant sky in the world, and in a latitude more 
southerly than that of Mecca or Calcutta. It was some com- 
pensation, however, to run at full speed past the dullest of 
Nile scenery, seeing only sandbanks in the river ; sand-hills 







WADY HALFEH. 



and sand-flats on either hand ; a disused shadoof or a skele- 
ton boat rotting at the water's edge ; a wind-tormented Dom- 
palm struggling for existence on the brink of the bank. 

At a fatal corner about six miles below Wady Halfeh, we 
passed a melancholy flotilla of dismantled dahabeeyahs — • 
the Fostat, the Zenobia, the Alice, the Mansoorah — all alike 
weather-bound and laid up helplessly against the wind. The 
Mansoorah, with Captain and Mrs. E. on board, had been 
three days doing these six miles : at which rate of progress 
they might reasonably hope to reach Cairo in about a year 
and a month. 

The palms of Wady Halfeh, blue with distance, came into 



THE SECOND CATARACT. 301 

sight at the next bend; and by noon the Philae was once more 
moored alongside the Bagstones under a shore crowded with 
cangias, covered with bales and packing cases, and, like the 
shores of Mahatta and Assuan, populous with temporary huts. 
For here it is that traders going by water embark and disem- 
bark on their way to and fro between Dongola and the First 
Cataract. 

There were three temples — or at all events three ancient 
Egyptian buildings — once upon a time on the western bank 
over against Wady Halfeh. Now there are a few broken 
pillars, a solitary fragment of brick pylon, some remains of 
a flight of stone steps leading down to the river, and a wall 
of enclosure overgrown with wild pumpkins. These ruins, 
together with a rambling native Khan and a noble old syca- 
more, form a picturesque group backed by amber sandcliffs, 
and mark the site of a lost city ^ belonging to the early days 
of Usurtesen III. 

The Second, or Great Cataract, begins a little way above 
Wady Halfeh and extends over a distance of many miles. 
It consists, like the First Cataract, of a succession of rocks 
and rapids, and is skirted for the first five miles or so by the 
sand-cliff ridge which, as I have said, forms a background to 
the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This ridge terminates 
abrubtly in the famous precipice known as the Rock of 
Abusir. Only adventurous travellers bound for Dongola or 
Khartum go beyond this point; and they, for the most part, 
take the shorter route across the desert from Korosko. L. 
and the Writer would fain have hired camels and })uslied on 
as far as Semneh ; which is a matter of only two days' jour- 
ney from Wady Halfeh, and, for people provided with sketch- 
ing tents, is one of the easiest of inland excursions. 

One may go to the Rock of Abusir by land or by water. 
The Happy Couple and the Writer took two native boatmen 
versed in the intricacies of the Cataract; and went in the 
felucca. L. and the Painter preferred donkeying. Given a 
good breeze from the right quarter, there is, as regards time, 
but little to choose between the two routes. No one, how- 
ever, who has approached the Rock of Abusir by water, 
and seen it rise like a cathedral front from the midst of 

' " Un Second Temple, plus grand, mais tout aussi detruit que le prece- 
dent, existe un peu plus au sud, c'e'tait le grand temple de la ville Egyp- 
tienne de Deheni, qui exista sur cet emplacement, et qui d'apres I'etendu 
des de'bris de poteries re'pandus sur la plaine aujourdhui de'serte, parait 
avoir e'te assez grande." — ChampoUion, Lettres ecrites d'Efitipie, etc., ed. 
1868; Letter IX. 



302 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

that labyrinth of rooky islets — some like clusters of basal- 
tic columns, some crowned with crumbling ruins, some bleak 
and bare, some green with wild pomegranate trees — can 
doubt which is the more picturesque. 

Landing among the tamarisks at the foot of the cliff, we 
come to the spreading skirts of a sand-drift steeper and more 
fatiguing to climb than the sand-drift at Abou Simbel. We 
do climb it, however, though somewhat sulkily, and finding 
the donkey-party perched upon the top, are comforted with 
draughts of ice-cold lemonade, brought in a kullah from 
Wady Half eh. 

The summit of the rock is a mere ridge, steep and over- 
hanging towards east and south, and carved all over with 
autographs in stone. Some few of these are interesting; 
but for the most part they record only the visits of the illus- 
trious-obscure. We found Belzoni's name ; but looked in 
vain for the signatures of Burckhardt, Champollion, Lepsius, 
and Ampere. 

Owing to the nature of the ground and the singular clear- 
ness of the atmosphere, the view from this point seemed to 
me to be the most extensive I had ever looked upon. Yet 
the height of the rock of Abusir is comparatively insignifi- 
cant. It would count but as a mole-hill, if measured against 
some Alpine summits of my acquaintance. I doubt whether 
it is as lofty as even the Great Pyramid. It is, however, a 
giddy place to look down from, and seems higher than it is. 

It is hard, now that we are actually here, to realise that 
this is the end of our journey. The cataract — an immense 
multitude of black and shining islets, among which the river, 
divided into hundreds of separate channels, spreads far and 
wide for a distance, it is said, of more than sixteen miles, — 
foams at our feet. Foams, and frets, and falls ; gushing 
smooth and strong where its course is free; murmuring 
hoarsely where it is interrupted ; now hurrying ; now loiter- 
ing ; here eddying in oily circles ; there lying in still -pools 
unbroken by a ripple ; everywhere full of life, full of voices; 
everywhere shining to the sun. Northwards, where it winds 
away towards Abou Simbel, we see all the fantastic moun- 
tains of yesterday on the horizon. To the east, still bounded 
by out-liers of the same disconnected chain, lies a rolling 
waste of dark and stony wilderness, trenched with innumer- 
able valleys through which flow streams of sand. On the 
western side, the continuity of the view is interrupted by 
the ridge which ends with Abusir. Southwards, the Libyan 



THE SECOND CATARACT. 303 

desert reaches away in one vast undulating plain ; tawny, 
arid, monotonous ; all sun ; all sand ; lit here and there with 
arrowy flashes of the Nile. Farthest of all, pale but distinct, 
on the outermost rim of the world, rise two mountain sum- 
mits, one long, one dome-like. Our Nubians tell us that 
these are the mountains of Dongola. Comparing our posi- 
tion with that of the Third Cataract as it appears upon the 
map, we come to the conclusion that these ghost-like silhou- 
ettes are the summits of Mount Fogo ^ and Mount Arambo — 
two apparently parallel mountains situate on opposite sides 
of the river about ten miles below Hannek, and consequently 
about 145 miles, as the bird flies, from the spot on which we 
are standing. 

In all this extraordinary panorama, so wild, so weird, so 
desolate, there is nothing really beautiful, except the colour. 
But the colour is transcendent. Never, even in Egypt, have 
I seen anything so tender, so transparent, so harmonious. 
I shut my eyes, and it all comes before me. I see the amber 
of the sands ; the pink and pearly mountains ; the Cataract 
rocks, all black and purple and polished ; the dull grey palms 
that cluster here and there upon the larger islands; the 
vivid verdure of the tamarisks and pomegranates ; the Nile, 
a greenish brown flecked with yeasty foam ; over all, the 
blue and burning sky, permeated with light, and palpitating 
with sunshine. 

I made no sketch. I felt that it would be ludicrous to 
attempt it. And I feel now that any endeavour to put the 
scene into words is a mere presumptuous effort to describe 
the indescribable. Words are useful instruments ; but, like 
the etching needle and the burin, they stop short at form. 
They cannot translate colour. 

If a traveller pressed for time asked me whether he should 
or should not go as far as the Second Cataract, I think I 
should recommend him to turn back from Abou Simbel. 
The trip must cost four days; and if the wind should happen 
to be unfavourable either way, it may cost six or seven. Tiie 
forty miles of river that have to be twice traversed are the 
dullest on the Nile ; the cataract is but an enlarged and 
barren edition of the Cataract between Assuan and Philae; 
and the great view, as I said, has not that kind of beauty 
which attracts the general tourist. 

It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that of 

1 Mount Fogo, as shown upon Keith Johnston's map of Egypt and Nubia, 
would seom to be identical with the Ali Bersi of Lepsius. 



304 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

beauty. It rouses one's imagination to a sense of the great- 
ness of the Nile. We look across a world of desert, and see 
the river still coming from afar. We have reached a point 
at which all that is habitable and familiar comes abruptly to 
an end. Not a village, not a bean-field, not a shaduf, not a 
sakkieh is to be seen in the plain below. There is no sail on 
those dangerous waters. There is no moving creature on 
those pathless sands. But for the telegraphic wires stalking, 
ghost-like, across the desert, it would seem as if we had 
touched the limit of civilisation, and were standing on the 
threshold of a land unexplored. 

Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the begin- 
ning of the mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a 
thousand miles against the stream ; but what is that to the 
distance which still lies between us and the Great Lakes ? 
And how far beyond the Great Lakes must we seek for the 
Source that is even yet undiscovered ? 

We stayed at Wady Halfeh but one night, and paid but one 
visit to the Cataract. We saw no crocodiles, though they 
are still plentiful among these rocky islets. The M. B.'s, 
who had been here a week, were full of crocodile stories, and 
of Alfred's deeds of arms. He had stalked and shot a mon- 
ster, two days before our arrival ; but the creature had 
rushed into the water when hit, waving its tail furiously 
above its head, and had neither been seen nor heard of since. 

Like Achilles, the crocodile has but one vulnerable spot; 
and this is a small unarmoured patch behind the forearm. 
He will take a good deal of killing even there, unless the 
bullet finds its way to a vital part, or is of the diabolical 
kind called "explosive." Even when mortally wounded, he 
seldom drops on the spot. With his last strength, he rushes 
to the water and dies at the bottom. 

After three days the carcase rises and floats, and our 
friends were now waiting in order that Alfred might bag his 
big game. Too often, however, the poor brute either crawls 
into a hole, or, in his agony, becomes entangled among weeds 
and comes up no more. For one crocodile bagged, a dozen 
regain the river and after lingering miserably under water, 
die out of sight and out of reach of the sportsman. 

While we were climbing the Rock of Abusir, our men 
Avere busy taking down the big sail and preparing the Philae 
for her long and ignominious journey down stream. We 
came back to find the mainyard laid along like a roof-tree 
above our heads ; the sail rolled up in a huge ball and resting 




The SEnoND Cataract -Nile. 



THE SECOND CATARACT. 305 

on the roof of the kitchen ; the small aftersail and yard 
hoisted on the mainmast ; the oars lashed six on each side ; 
and the lower deck a series of yawning chasms, every alter- 
nate plank being taken up so as to form seats and standing ^ 
places for the rowers. 

Thus dismantled, the dahabeeyah becomes, in fact, a galley. 
Her oars are now her chief motive power; and a crew of 
steady rowers (having always the current in their favour) can 
do thirty miles a day. When, however, a good breeze blows 
from the south, the small sail and the current are enough to 
carry the boat well along ; and then the men reserve their 
strength for rowing by night, when the wind has dropped. 
Sometimes, when it is a dead calm and the rowers need rest, 
the dahabeeyah is left to her own devices, and floats with 
the stream — now Avaltzing ludicrously in the middle of the 
river; now drifting sidewise like Mr. Winkle's horse ; now 
sidling up to the east bank ; now changing her mind and 
blundering over to the west ; making upon an average about 
a mile and a half or two miles an hour, and presenting a 
pitiful spectacle of helpless imbecility. At other times, how- 
ever, the head wind blows so hard that neither oars nor 
current avail ; and then there is nothing for it but to lie 
under the bank and wait for better times. 

This was our sad case in going back to Abou Simbel. 
Having straggled with no little difficulty through the first 
five-and-twenty miles, we came to a dead lock about half- 
way between Faras and Gebel-esh-Shems. Carried forward 
by the stream, driven back by the wind, buffeted by the 
waves, and bumped incessantly by the rocking to and fro 
of the felucca, our luckless Philae, after oscillating for hours 
within the space of a mile, was run at last into a sheltered 
nook, and there left in peace till the wind should change or 
drop. 

Imprisoned here for a day and a half, we found ourselves, 
for^-^ uately, within reach of the tumuli which we had already 
made up our minds to explore. Making first for those on 
the east bank, we took with us in the felucca four men to 
row and dig, a fire-shovel, a small hatchet, an iron bar, and 
a large wicker basket, Avhich were the only implements we 
possessed. What we wanted both then and afterwards, and 
what no dahabeeyah should ever be without, were two or 
three good spades, a couple of picks, and a crowbar. 

Climbing to the top of one of the highest of these hillocks, 
we began by surveying the ground. The desert here is firm 



306 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

to the tread, flat, compact, and thickly strewn with pebbles. 
Of the fine yellow sand which characterises the Libyan bank, 
there is little to be seen, and that little lies like snow in 
drifts and clefts and hollows, as if carried thither by the 
wind. The tumuli, however, are mounded of pure alluvial 
mould, smooth, solid, and symmetrical. We counted thirty- 
four of all sizes, from five to about five-and-tliirty feet in 
height, and saw at least as many more on the opposite side 
of the river. 

Selecting one of about eight feet high, we then set the 
sailors to work ; and although it was impossible, with so few 
men and such insufficient tools, to cut straight through the 
centre of the mound, we at all events succeeded in digging 
down to a solid substratum of lumps of crude clay, evidently 
moulded by hand. 

Wliether these formed only the foundation of the tumulus, 
or concealed a grave excavated below the level of the desert, 
we had neither time nor means to ascertain. It was some- 
thing, at all events, to have convinced ourselves that the 
mounds were artificial.-' 

As we came away, we met a Nubian peasant trudging 
northwards. He was leading a sorry camel ; had a Avhite 
cockerel under his arm ; and was followed by a frightened 
woman, who drew her shawl over her face and cowered be- 
hind him, at sight of the Ingleezeh. 

We asked the man what the mounds were, and who made 
them ; but he shook his head, and said they had been there 
"from old time." We then inquired by what name they were 
known in these parts ; to which, urging his camel forward, 
he replied hesitatingly that they had a name, but that he 
had forgotten it. 

Having gone a little way, however, he presently turned 
back, saying that he now remembered all about it, and that 
they were called " The Horns of Yackma." 

More than this we could not get from him. Who Yackma 
was, or how he came to have horns, or why his horns should 
take the form of tumuli, was more than he could tell or we 
could guess. 

We gave him a small bakhshish, however, in return for this 

1 On referring to Col. H. Vyse's Voyage into Upper Egypt, etc., I see 
that he also opened one of these tumuli, but " found no indication of an 
aititicial construction." I can only conclude that he did not carry his 
excavation low enough. As it is difficult to suppose the tumuli made for 
nothing, I cannot help believing that they would repay a more systematic 
vivestigatiou. 



THE SECOND CATARACT. 307 

mysterious piece of information, and went our way with all 
possible speed; intending to row across and see the mounds 
on the opposite bank before sunset. But we had not calcu- 
lated upon the difficulty of either threading our way among 
a chain of sandbanks, or going at least two miles farther 
north, so as to get round into the navigable channel at the 
other side. We of course tried the shorter way, and after 
running aground some three or four times, had to give it up, 
hoist our little sail, and scud homewards as fast as the wind 
would carry us. 

The coming back thus, after an excursion in the felucca, is 
one of the many pleasant things that one has to remember of 




THE KOCK OF ABUSIR. 



the Nile. The sun has set ; the afterglow has faded ; the stars 
are coming out. Leaning back with a satisfied sense of some- 
thing seen or done, one listens to the old dreamy chant of the 
rowers, and to the ripple under the keel. The palms, mean- 
while, glide past, and are seen in bronzed relief against the 
sky. Presently the big boat, all glittering with lights, looms 
up out of the dusk. A cheery voice hails from the poop. 
We glide under the bows. Half-a-dozen smiling brown faces 
bid us welcome, and as many pairs of brown hands are out- 
stretched to help us up the side. A savoury smell is wafted 
from the kitchen ; a pleasant vision of the dining-saloon, with 
table ready spread and lamps ready lit, flashes upon us 
through the open doorway. We are at home once more. 
Let us eat, drink, rest, and be merry ; for to-morrow the hard 
work of sight-seeino- and sketchins: besrins asjain. 



308 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 

We came back to find a fleet of dahabeeyahs ranged along 
the shore at Abou Simbel, and no less than three sketching 
tents in occupation of the ground. One of these, which 
liappened to be pitched on the precise spot vacated by our 
Painter, was courteously shifted to make way for the original 
tenant ; and in the course of a couple of hours, we were all as 
much at home as if we had not been away for half-a-day. 

Here, meanwhile, was our old acquaintance the Fostat, 
with her party of gentlemen ; yonder the Zenobia, all ladies ; 
the little Alice, with Sir J. C. and Mr. W. on board ; the Sirena 
flying the stars and stripes ; the Mansoorah, bound presently 
for the Fay um. To these were next day added the Ebers, 
with a couple of German savants ; and the Bagstones, wel- 
come back from AVady Halfeh. 

What with arrivals and departures, exchange of visits, 
exhibitions of sketches, and sociabilities of various kinds, 
we had now quite a gay time. The Philae gave a dinner- 
party and fantasia under the very noses of the colossi, and 
every evening there was drumming and howling enough 
among the assembled crews to raise the ghosts of Rameses 
and all his Queens. This was pleasant enough wliile it lasted ; 
but when the strangers dropped off one by one, and at the 
end of three days we were once more alone, I think we were 
not sorry. The place was, somehow, too solemn for 

" Singing, laughing, ogling, and all that." 

It was by comparing our watches with those of the travel- 
lers whom we met at Abou Simbel, that we now found out 
how hopelessly our timekeepers and theirs had gone astray. 

We had been altering ours continually ever since leaving 
Cairo; but the sun was as continually putting them wrong 
again, so that we had lost all count of the true time. The 
flrst words with which we now sjreeted a newcomer were — 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 309 

" Do you know what o'clock it is ? " To which the stranger 
as invariably replied that it was the very question he was 
himself about to ask. The confusion became at last so great 
that, finding that we had about eleven hours of day to thir- 
teen of night, we decided to establish an arbitrary canon ; so 
we called it seven Avhen the sun rose, and six when it set, 
which answered every purpose. 

It was between two and four o'clock, according to this 
time of ours, that the Southern Cross was now visible every 
morning. It is undoubtedly best seen at Abou Simbel. 
The river is here very wide, and just where the constellation 
rises there is an opening in the mountains on the eastern 
bank, so that these four fine stars, though still low in the 
heavens, are seen in a free space of sky. If they make, even 
so, a less magnificent appearance than one has been led to 
expect, it is probably because we see them from too low a 
point of view. To say that a constellation is foreshortened 
sounds absurd ; yet that is just Avhat is the matter with the 
Southern Cross at Abou Simbel. Viewed at an angle of 
about 30°, it necessarily looks distort and dim. If seen burn- 
ing in the zenith, it woiild no doubt come up to the level of 
its reputation. 

It was now the fifth day after our return from Wady 
Halfeh, when an event occurred that roused us to an un- 
wonted pitch of excitement, and kept us at high pressure 
throughout the rest of our time. 

The day was Sunday ; the date February 16th, 1874 ; the 
time, according to Philae reckoning, about eleven a.m., when 
the Painter, enjoying his seventh day's holiday after his own 
fashion, went strolling about among the rocks. He happened 
to turn his steps southwards, and passing the front of the 
Great Temple, climbed to the top of a little shapeless raourid 
of fallen cliff, and sand, and crude-brick wall, just against 
the corner where the mountain slopes down to the river. 
Immediately round this corner, looking almost due south, and 
approachable by only a narrow ledge of rock, are two votive 
tablets sculptured and painted, both of. the thirty-eighth year 
of Rameses II. We had seen these from the river as we 
came back ixoxxi Wady Halfeh, and had remarked how fine 
the view must be from that point. Beyond the fact that 
they are coloured, and that the colour upon them is still 
bright, there is nothing remarkable about these inscriptions. 
There are many such at Abou Simbel. Our Painter did not, 
therefore, come here to examine the tablets; he was attracted 
solely by the view. 



310 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Turning back presently, his attention was arrested by 
some much mutilated sculptures on the face of the rock, a 
few yards nearer the south buttress of the Temple. He had 
seen these sculptures before — so, indeed, had I, when wan- 
dering about that hrst day in search of a point of view — 
without especially remarking them. The relief was low ; 
the execution slight ; and the surface so broken away that 
only a few confused outlines remained. 

The thing that now caught the Painter's eye, however, 
was a long crack running transversely down the face of the 
rock. It was such a crack as might have been caused, one 
would say, by blasting. 

He stooped — cleared the sand away a little with his hand 
— observed that the crack widened — poked in the point of 
his stick ; and found that it penetrated to a depth of two or 
three feet. Even then, it seemed to him to stop, not because 
it encountered any obstacle, but because the crack Avas not 
wide enough to admit the thick end of the stick. 

This surprised him. No mere fault in the natural rock, he 
thought, would go so deep. He scooped away a little more 
sand ; and still the cleft widened. He introduced the stick 
a second time. It was a long palm-stick like an alpenstock, 
and it measured about live feet in length. When he probed 
the cleft with it this second time, it went in freely up to 
where he held it in his hand — that is to say, to a depth of 
quite four feet. 

Convinced now that there was some hidden cavity in 
the rock, he carefully examined the surface. There were 
yet visible a few hieroglyphic characters and part of two 
cartouches, as well as some battered outlines of what had 
once been figures. T'he heads of these figures were gone (the 
face of the rock, with whatever may have been sculptured 
upon it, having come away bodily at this point), while from 
the waist downwards they were hidden under the sand. 
Only some hands and arms, in short, could be made out. 

They were the hands and arms, apparently, of four figures ; 
two in the centre of the composition, and two at the extremi- 
ties. The two centre ones, which seemed to be back to back, 
probably represented gods ; the outer ones, worshippers. 

All at once, it flashed upon the Painter that he had seen 
this kind of group many a time before — and generally over 
a doorway. 

. Feeling sure now that he was on the brink of a discovery, 
he came back ; fetched away Salame and Mehemet Ali ; and 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 311 

without saying a syllable to any one, set to work with these 
two to scrape away the sand at the spot where the crack 
Avidened. 

Meanwhile, the luncheon bell having rung thrice, we con- 
cluded that the Fainter had rambled off somewhere into the 
desert; and so sat down without him. Towards the close 
of the meal, however, came a pencilled note, the contents of 
which ran as follows : — 

"Pray come immediately — I have found the entrance to 
a tomb. Please send some sandwiches — A. M'C." 

To follow the messenger at once to the scene of action 
Avas the general impulse. In less than ten minutes we were 
there, asking breathless questions, peeping in through the 
fast-widening aperture, and helping to clear away the sand. 

All that Sunday afternoon, heedless of possible sunstroke, 
unconscious of fatigue, we toiled upon our hands and knees, 
as for bare life, under the burning sun. We had all the 
crew up, working like tigers. Every one helped ; even the 
dragoman and the two maids. More than once, when we 
paused for a moment's breathing space, we said to each other : 
" If those at home could see us, what would they say ! " 

And now, more than ever, we felt the need of implements. 
With a spade or two and a wheelbarrow, we could have done 
wonders ; but with only one small fire-shovel, a birch broom, 
a couple of charcoal baskets, and about twenty pairs of hands, 
Ave were poor indeed. What was wanted in means, hoAvever, 
was made up in method. Some scraped away the sand ; some 
gathered it into baskets ; some carried the baskets to the 
edge of the cliff, and emptied them into the river. The Idle 
Man distinguished himself by scooping out a channel Avhere 
the slope Avas steepest ; Avhich greatly facilitated the work. 
Emptied down this shoot and kept continually going, the 
sand poured off in a steady stream like water. 

Meanwhile the opening grew rapidly larger. When we 
first came up — that is, Avhen the Painter and the two sailors 
had been Avorking on it for about an hour — we found a hole 
scarcely as large as one's hand, through which it was just 
possible to catch a dim glimpse of painted walls Avithin. By 
sunset, the top of the doorway Avas laid bare, and where the 
crack ended in a large triangular fracture, there was an 
aperture about a foot and a half square, into Avhich Mehemet 
All Avas the first to squeeze his way. We passed him in a 
candle and a box of matches ; but he came out again directly, 
saying that it was a most beautiful Birbeh, and quite light 
within. 



312 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The Writer wriggled in next. She found herself looking 
down from the top of a sandslope into a small square cham- 
ber. This sand-drift, which here rose to within a foot and a 
half of the top of the doorway, was heaped to the ceiling in 
the corner behind the door, and thence sloped steeply down, 
completely covering the floor. There was light enough to 
see every detail distinctly — the painted frieze running 
round just under the ceiling ; the bas-relief sculptures on 
the walls, gorgeous with unfaded colour ; the smooth sand, 
pitted near the top, where Mehemet Ali had trodden, but 
undisturbed elsewhere by human foot ; the great gap in the 
middle of the ceiling, where the rock had given way; the 
fallen fragments on the floor, now almost buried in sand. 

Satisfled that the place was absolutely fresh and untouched, 
the Writer crawled out, and the others, one by one, crawled 
in. When each had seen it in turn, the opening was barri- 
caded for the night; the sailors being forbidden to enter it, 
lest they should injure the decorations. 

That evening was held a solemn council, whereat it was 
decided that Talhamy and Reis Hassan should go to-morrow 
to the nearest village, there to engage the services of fifty 
able-bodied natives. With such help, we calculated that the 
place might easily be cleared in two days. If it was a tomb, 
we hoped to discover the entrance to the mummy pit below ; 
if but a small chapel, or Speos, like those at Ibrim, we should 
at least have the satisfaction of seeing all that it contained 
in the way of sculptures and inscriptions. 

This was accordingly done ; but we worked again next 
morning just the same, till mid-day. Our native contingent, 
numbering about forty men, then made their appearance 
in a rickety old boat, the bottom of which was half full of 
water. 

They had been told to bring implements ; and they did 
bring such as they had — two broken oars to dig with, some 
baskets, and a number of little slips of planking which, being 
tied between two pieces of rope and drawn along the surface, 
acted as scrapers, and were useful as far as they went. 
Squatting in double file from the entrance of the Speos to 
the edge of the cliff, and to the burden of a rude chant pro- 
pelling these improvised scrapers, the men began by clearing 
a path to the doorway. This gave them work enough for the 
afternoon. At sunset, when they dispersed, the path was 
scooped out to a depth of four feet, like a miniature railway 
cutting between embankments of sand. 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 



Sll 



Next morning came the Sheykh in person, with his two 
sons and a following of a hundred men. This was so many- 
more than we had bargained for, that we at once foresaw a 
scheme to extort money. The Sheykh, however, proved to 
be that same Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kaslief, by whom the 
Happy Couple had been so hospitably entertained about a 
fortnight before ; we therefore received him with honour, 
invited him to luncheon, and, hoping to get the Avork done, 
quickly set the men on in gangs under the superintendence of 
Reis Hassan and the head sailor. 




ENTRANCE OF SPEOS. 



By noon, the door was cleared down to the threshold, and 
the whole south and west walls were laid bare to the floor. 

We now found that the debris which blocked the north 
wall and the centre of the floor was not, as we had at first 
supposed, a pile of fallen fragments, but one solid boulder 
Avhich had come down bodily from above. To remove this 
was impossible. We had no tools to cut or break it, and it 
was both wider and higher than the doorway. Even to clear 
away the sand which rose behind it to the ceiling would have 
taken a long time, and have caused inevitable injury to the 
paintings around. Already the brilliancy of the colour was 



314 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

marred where the men had leaned their backs, all wet with 
perspiration, against the walls. 

Seeing, therefore, that three-fourths of the decorations 
were now uncovered, and that behind the fallen block there 
appeared to be no subject of great size or importance, we 
made up our minds to carry the work no further. 

Meanwhile, we had great fun at lunclieou with our Nubian 
Sheykh — a tall, well-featured man with much natural dig- 
nity of manner. He was well dressed, too, and wore a white 
turban most symmetrically folded ; a white vest buttoned to 
the throat ; a long loose robe of black serge ; an outer robe 
of fine black cloth with hanging sleeves and a hood ; and on 
his feet, white stockings and scarlet morocco shoes. When 
brought face to face with a knife and fork, his embarrassment 
was great. He was, it seemed, too grand a personage to feed 
himself. He must have a " feeder ; " as the great man of 
the Middle Ages had a '•' taster." Talhamy accordingly, 
being promoted to this office, picked out choice bits of mut- 
ton and chicken with his fingers, dipped pieces of bread in 
gravy, and put every morsel into our guest's august mouth, 
as if the said guest were a baby. 

The sweets being served, the Little Lady, L., and the 
Writer took him in hand, and fed him with all kinds of jams 
and preserved fruits. Enchanted with these attentions, the 
poor man ate till he could eat no longer ; then laid his hand 
pathetically over the region next his heart, and cried for 
mercy. After luncheon, he smoked his chibouque, and coffee 
was served. Our coffee did not please him. He tasted it, 
but immediately returned the cup, telling the waiter with a 
grimace, that the berries were burned and the coffee weak. 
When, however, we apologised for it, he protested with Ori- 
ental insincerity that it was excellent. 

To amuse him was easy, for he was interested in every- 
thing; in L.'s field-glass, in the Painter's accordion, in the 
piano, and the lever corkscrew. With some eau-de-Cologne 
he was also greatly charmed, rubbing it on his beard and in- 
haling it with closed eyes, in a kind of rapture. To make 
talk was, as usual, the great difficulty. When he had told 
us that his eldest son was Governor of Derr ; that his young- 
est was five years of age ; that the dates of Derr were better 
than the dates of Wady Halfeh ; and that the Nubian people 
were very poor, he was at the end of his topics. Finally, he 

requested us to convey a letter from him to Lord D , who 

had entertained him on board his dahabeeyah the year be- 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SI MB EL. 315 

fore. Being asked if he had brought his letter with him, he 
shook his head, saying : — " Your dragoman shall write it." 

So paper and a reed-pen were produced, and Talhamy 
wrote to dictation as follows : — 

" God have care of you. I hope you are well. I am sorry 
not to have had a letter from you since you were here. Your 
brother and friend, Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef." 

A model letter this ; brief, and to the point. 

Our urbane and gentlemanly Sheykh was, however, not 
quite so charming when it came to settling time. We had 
sent at first for fifty men, and the price agreed upon was five 
piastres, or about a shilling English, for each man per day. 
In answer to this call, there first came forty men for half a 
day ; then a hundred men for a whole day, or what was called 
a whole day ; so making a total of six pounds due for wages. 
But the descendant of the Kashefs would hear of nothing so 
commonplace as the simple fulfilment of a straightforward 
contract. He demanded full pay for a hundred men for two 
whole days, a gun for himself, and a liberal bakhshish in cash. 
Finding he had asked more than he had any chance of getting, 
he conceded the question of wages, but stood out for a game- 
bag and a pair of pistols. Finally, he was obliged to be 
content with the six pounds for his men, and for himself two 
pots of jam, two boxes of sardines, a bottle of eau-de-Cologne, 
a box of pills, and half-a-sovereign. 

By four o'clock he and his followers were gone, and we 
once more had the place to ourselves. So long as they were 
there it was impossible to do anything, but now, for the first 
time, we fairly entered into possession of our newly found 
treasure. 

All the rest of that day, and all the next day, we spent at 
work in and about the Speos. L. and the Little Lady took 
their books and knitting there, and made a little drawing-room 
of it. The Writer copied paintings and inscriptions. The 
Idle Man and the Painter took measurements and surveyed 
the ground round about, especially endeavouring to make out 
the plan of certain fragments of wall, the foundations of 
which were yet traceable. 

A careful examination of these ruins, and a little clearing 
of the sand here and there, led to further discoveries. They 
found that the Speos had been approached by a large outer 
hall built of sun-dried brick, with one principal entrance facing 
the Nile, and two side-entrances facing northwards. The 
floor was buried deep in sand and debris, but enough of the 



316 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

walls remained above the surface to show that the ceiling 
had been vaulted and the side-entrances arched. 

The southern boundary wall of this hall, when the surface 
sand was removed, appeared to be no less than 20 feet in 
thickness. This was not in itself so Avonderful, there being 
instances of ancient Egyptian crude-brick walls which measure 
80 feet in thickness ; ^ but it was astounding as compared with 
the north, east, and west walls, which measured only 3 feet. 
Deeming it impossible that this mass could.be solid through- 
out, the Idle Man set to work with a couple of sailors to probe 
the centre part of it, and it soon became evident that there 
was a hollow space about three feet in width running due east 
and west down not quite exactly the middle of the structure. 

All at once the Idle Man thrust his fingers into a skull ! 

This was such an amazing and unexpected incident, that 
for the moment he said nothing, but went on quietly displa- 
cing the sand and feeling his way under the surface. The 
next instant his hand came in contact with the edge of a clay 
bowl, which he carefully withdrew. It measured about four 
inches in diameter, was hand-moulded, and full of caked sand. 
He now proclaimed his discoveries, and all van to help in the 
w^ork. Soon a second and smaller skull Avas turned up, then 
another bowl, and then, just under the place from which the 
bowls were taken, the bones of two skeletons all detached, 
perfectly desiccated, and apparently complete. The remains 
were those of a child and a small grown person — probably a 
woman. The teeth were sound ; the bones wonderfully deli- 
cate and brittle. As for the little skull (which had fallen 
apart at the sutures), it was pure and fragile in texture as 
the cup of a water-lily. 

We laid the bones aside as we found them, examining 
every handful of sand, in the hope of discovering something 
that might throw light upon the burial. But in vain. We 
found not a shred of clothing, not a bead, not a coin, not the 
smallest vestige of anything that might help one to judge 
whether the interment had taken place a hundred years ago 
or a thousand. 

We now called up all the crew, and "v^^ent on excavating 
downwards into what seemed to be a long and narrow vault 
measuring some fifteen feet by three. 

After-reflection convinced us that we had stumbled upon 

1 The enclosure-wall of the Great Temple of Tanis is 80 feet thick. 
See Tanis, Part I, by W. M. F. Petrie; published by the Committee of the 
Egypt Exploration JFund, 1885. [Note to Second Edition.) 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIM BEL. 317 

a chance Nubian grave, and that the bowls (which at first we 
absurdly dignified with the name of cinerary urns) were but 
the usual water-bowls placed at the heads of the dead. But 
we were in no mood for reflection at the time. We made 
sure that the Speos was a mortuary chapel ; that the vault 
was a vertical pit leading to a sepulchral chamber ; and that 
at the bottom of it we should find .... who could tell what ? 
Mummies, perhaps, and sarcophagi, and funerary statuettes, 
and jewels, and papyri, and wonders without end! That 
these uncared-for bones should be laid in the mouth of 
such a pit scarcely occurred to us as an incongruity. Sup- 
posing them to be JSTubiau remains, what then ? If a 
modern Nubian at the top, why not an ancient Egyptian at 
the bottom ? 

As the work of excavation went on, however, the vault 
was found to be entered by a steep inclined plane. Then the 
inclined plane turned out to be a flight of much worn and 
very shallow stairs. These led down to a small square landing, 
some twelve feet below the surface, from which landing an 
arched doorway ^ and passage opened into the fore-court of 
the Speos. Our sailors had great difficulty in excavating this 
part, in consequence of the weight of superincumbent sand 
and debris on the side next the Speos. By shoring up the 
ground, however, they were enabled completely to clear the 
landing, which was curiously paved with cones of rude pottery 
like the bottoms of amphorae. These cones, of which we took 
out some twenty-eight or thirty, were not in the least like the 
celebrated funerary cones found so abundantly at Thebes. 
They bore no stamp, and were much shorter and more lumpy 
in shape. Finally, the cones being all removed, we came to 
a compact and solid floor of baked clay. 

The Painter, meanwhile, had also beeii at work. Having 
traced the circuit and drawn out a ground-plan, he came to 
the conclusion that the whole mass adjoining the southern 
wall of the Speos was in fact composed of the ruins of a pylon, 
the walls of which were seven feet in thickness, built in reg- 
ular string-courses of moulded brick, and finished at the angles 
with the usual torus, or round moulding. The superstructure, 
with its chambers, passages, and top cornice, was gone ; and 

1 It was long believed that the Egyptians were ignorant of the prin- 
ciple of the arch. This, however, was not the case. There are brick arches 
of the time of Rameses II behind the Ramesseuin at Thebes, and elsewhere. 
Still, arches are rare in Egypt. We filled in and covered the arch again, 
and the greater part of the staircase, in order to preserve the former. 



318 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

this part with which we were now concerned was merely the 
basement, and. included the bottom of the staircase. 

The Painter's ground-plan demolished all our hopes at one 
fell swoop. The vault was a vault no longer. The staircase 
led to no sepulchral chamber. The brick floor hid no secret 
entrance. Our mummies melted into thin air, and we were 
left with no excuse for carrying on the excavations. We 
were mortally disappointed. In vain we told ourselves that 
the discovery of a large brick pylon, the existence of which 
had been unsuspected by preceding travellers, was an event 
of greater importance than the finding of a tomb. We had 
set our hearts on the tomb ; and I am afraid we cared less 
than we ought for the pylon. 

Having traced thus far the course of the excavations and 
the way in which one discovery led step by step to another, 
I must now return to the Speos, and, as accurately as I can, 
describe it, not only from my notes made on the spot, but by 
the light of such observations as I afterwards made among 
structures of the same style and period. I must, however, 
premise that, not being able to go inside while the excavators 
were in occupation, and remaining but one whole day at Abou 
Simbel after the work was ended, I had but short time at my 
disposal. I would gladly have made coloured copies of all 
the wall-paintings, but this was impossible. I therefore Avas 
obliged to be content with transcribing the inscriptions and 
sketching a few of the more important subjects. 

The rock-cut chamber whicli I have hitherto described as 
a Speos, and which we at first believed to be a tomb, was in 
fact neither the one nor the other. It was the adytum of a 
partly built, partly excavated monument coeval in date with 
the Great Temple. In certain points of design this monument 
resembles the contemporary Speos of Bayt-el-Welly. It is 
evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were origi- 
nally vaulted ; and the much mutilated sculptures over the 
doorway of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost 
identical in subject and treatment with those over the en- 
trance to the excavated parts of Bayt-el-Welly. As regards 
general conception, the Abou Simbel monument comes under 
the same head with the contemporary Temples of Derr, Gerf 
Hossayn. and Wady Sabooah ; being in a mixed style which 
combines excavation with construction. This style seems 
to have been peculiarly in favour during the reign of 
Rameses II. 

Sitiiate at the south-eastern angle of the rock, a little way 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIM BEL. 



319 



beyond the facade of the Great Temple, this rock-cut adytum 
and hall of entrauce face S.E. by E., and command much the 
same view that is commanded higher up by the Temple of 
Hathor. The adytum, or excavated Speos, measures 21 feet 
2h inches in breadth by 14 feet 8 inches in length. The 
height from floor to ceiling is about 12 feet. The doorwav 




Scale fi oif nn lii^h-to a. Foot 



1. Wall of pylon. 

2. Square landing. 

.3. Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall. 

4. Walls of outer hall or pronaos. 

5. Door-jambs. 

6. Stone hawks on pedestals. 

7. Torus of pylon. 

8. Arclied entrances in north wall of pronaos. 



820 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

measures 4 feet 3^ inches in Mddth ; and the outer recess for 
the door-frame, 5 feet. Two large circular holes, one in the 
threshold and the other in the lintel, mark the place of the 
pivot on which the door once swung. 

It is not very easy to measure the outer hall in its present 
ruined and encumbered state ; but as nearly as we could judge 
its dimensions are as follows : — Length, 25 feet ; width, 22|- 
feet ; width of principal entrance facing the Nile, 6 feet ; 
width of two side entrances 4 feet and 6 feet respectively ; 
thickness of crude-brick walls, 3 feet. Engaged in the brick- 
work on either side of the principal entrance to this hall are 
£wo stone door-jambs ; and some six or eight feet in front of 
these, there originally stood two stone hawks on hieroglyphed 
pedestals. One of these hawks Ave found in situ, the other lay 
some little distance off, and the Painter (suspecting nothing 
of these after-revelations) had used it as a post to which to 
tie one of the main ropes of his sketching tent. A large 
hieroglyphed slab, which I take to have formed part of the 
door, lay overturned against the side of the pylon some few 
yards nearer the river. 

As far as the adytum and outer hall are concerned, the ac- 
companying ground-plan — which is in part founded on my 
own measurements, and in part borrowed from the ground-plan 
drawn out by the Painter — may be accepted as tolerably 
correct. But with regard to the pylon, I can only say with 
certainty that the central staircase is three feet in width, and 
that the walls on each side of it are seven feet in thickness. 
So buried is it in debris and sand, that even to indicate where 
the building ends and the rubbish begins at the end next the 
Nile, is impossible. This part is therefore left indefinite in 
the ground- plan. 

So far as we could see, there was no stone revetement upon 
the inner side of the walls of the pronaos. If anything of 
the kind ever existed, some remains of it would probably be 
found by thoroughly clearing the area ; an interesting enter- 
prise for any who may have leisure to undertake it. 

I have now to speak of the decorations of the adytum, the 
walls of which, from immediately under the ceiling to within 
three feet of the floor, are covered with religious subjects 
elaborately sculptured in bas-relief, coated as usual with a 
thin film of stucco, and coloured with a richness for which I 
know no parallel, except in the tomb of Seti I ^ at Thebes. 
Above the level of the drifted sand, this colour was as 

1 Commonly known as Belzoni's Tomb. 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIM BEL. 



321 



brilliant in tone and as fresh in surface as on the day when 
it was transferred to those walls from the palette of the 
painter. All below that level, however, was dimmed and 
damaged. 

The ceiling is surrounded by a frieze of cartouches sup- 
ported by sacred asps ; each cartauche, with its supporters, 
being divided from the next by a small sitting figure. These 
figures, in other respects uniform, wear the symbolic heads 
of various gods — the cow-head of Hathor, the ibis-head of 
Thoth, the hawk-head of Horns, the jackal-head of Anubis, 
etc. etc. The cartouches contain the ordinary style and title 
of liameses II (Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra Rameses Mer-ximen), 
and are surmounted by a row of sun-disks. Under each sit- 
ting god is depicted the phonetic hieroglyph signifying Mer, 




PATTERN OF CORNICK. 



or Beloved. By means of this device, the whole frieze as- 
sumes the character of a connected legend, and describes the 
king not only as beloved of Amen, but as Rameses beloved 
of Hathor, of Thoth, of Horus — in short, of each God 
depicted in the series. 

These Gods excepted, the frieze is almost identical in de- 
sign with the frieze in the first hall of the great Temple, 



WEST WALL.^ 

The west, or principal wall, facing the entrance, is divided 
into two large subjects, each containing two figures the size 
of life. In the division to the right, Rameses II worships 
Ra; in the division to the left, he worships Amen-Ra; tlius 
following the order observed in the other two temples, where 

1 I write of these walls, for convenience, as N., S., E., and W., as one 
is so accustomed to regard the position of buildings parallel with the river ; 
but the present monument, as it is turned slightly southward round the 
angle of the rock, really stands S.E. by E., instead of east and west like 
the large Temple, 



322 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



the subjects relating to Amen-E,a occupy the left half, and 
the subjects relating to Ea occupy the right half, of each 
structure. An upright ensign surmounted by an exquisitely 
drawn and coloured head of Horus Aroeris separates these two 
subjects.^ In the subject to the right, Ea- 
meses, wearing the red and white pschent, 
presents an offering of two small ary- 
ballos vases without handles. The vases 
are painted blue, and are probably intended 
to represent lapis lazuli ; a substance much 
prized by the ancient Egyptians, and 
known to them by the name of khesbet. 
The King's necklace, armlets, and brace- 
lets are also blue. Ea sits enthroned, hold- 
ing in one hand the " Ankh," or "crux 




ansata, emblem of life. 



? 



and 



the 



STANDARD OF HOKUS 
AROEKIS. 



other the greyhound-headed- sceptre of the 
Gods. He is hawk-headed, and crowned 
with the sun-disk and asp. His flesh is 
painted bright Venetian red. He wears a 
pectoral ornament ; a rich necklace of al- 
ternate vermilion and black drops ; and a 
golden-yellow belt studded with red and black stones. The 
throne, which stands on a blue platform, is painted in 
stripes of red, blue, and white. The platform is decorated 
with a row of gold-coloured stars and "ankh" emblems 
picked out with red. At the foot of this platform, between 
the God and the King, stands a small altar, on which are 
placed the usual blue lotus with red stalk, and a spouted 
libation vessel. 

To the left of the Horus ensign, seated back-to-back with 
Ea upon a similar throne, sits Amen-Ea — of all Egyptian 
Gods the most terrible to look upon — with his blue-black 
complexion, his corselet of golden chain-armour, and his liead- 



1 Horus Aroeris. — " Celui-ci, qui semble avoir etc frere d'Osiris, porte 
une tete d'epervier coiffee du pschent. II est presque completement 
identifie avec le soleil dans la plupart des lieux ou il etait adore, et 11 en 
est de meme tres souvent pour Horus, fils d'Isis." — Notice Sommaire des 
Monuments du Lorivre, 1873. De Rouge. In the present instance, this 
God seems to have been identified with Ra. 

2 " Le sceptre a tete de levrier, nomme a tort sceptre a tete de coucoupha, 
etait porte par les dieux." — Die. d'Arch. Egyptienne : P. Pierret; 
Paris, 1875. 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SI MB EL. 



323 



dress of towering plumes.^ Here the wonderful preservation 
of the surface enabled one to see by what means the ancient 
artists were wont to produce this 
singular bh;e-black effect of colour. 
It was evident tliat the flesh of the 
God had first been laid in with dead 
black, and then coloured over with 
a dry, powdery cobalt-blue, through 
which the black remained partially 
visible. He carries in one hand the 
ankh, and in the other the grey- 
hound-headed sceptre. 

To liim advances the King, his 
right hand uplifted, and in his left 
a small basket containing a votive 
statuette of Ma, the Goddess of 
Truth and Justice. Ma is, how- 
ever, shorn of her distinctive feath- 
er, and holds the jackal-headed 
staff instead of the customary crux 
ansata. 

As portraiture, there is not much 
to be said for any of these heads of 
Rameses II ; but the features bear 
a certain resemblance to the well- 
known profile of tlie King; the 
action of the figure is graceful and 

animated ; and the drawing displays in all its purity 
firm and flowing line of Egyptian draughtsmanship. 




I'.AMHSKS II OF SPEOS. 



the 



1 Amen of the blue complexion is the most ancient type of this God. 
He here represents divine royalty, in which character his title is: "Lord 
of the Heaven, of the Earth, of the Waters, and of the Mountains." 
" Dans ce role de roi du nionde. Anion a les chairs peintes en bleu pour 
indiquer sa nature celeste ; etlorsqu'il porte le titre de Ssigneur des Trones, 
il^est represente assis, la couronne en tete: d'ordinaire il est debout." — 
Etude des Monuments de Karnak. De Rouge. Melanyes d'Archeolorjie, 
vol. i. 1873. 

There were almost as many varieties of Amen in Egypt as there are 
varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain. There was an Amen of Thebes, 
an Amen of Elephantine, an Amen of Coptos, an Amen of Chemmis 
(Panopolis), an Amen of the Resurrection, Amen of the Dew, Amen of the 
Sun (Amen-Ra), Amen Self-created, etc. etc. Amen and Khem were doubt- 
less identical. It is an interesting fact that our English words, chemical, 
chemist, chemistry, etc., which the dictionaries derive from the Arabic al- 
kimia, may be traced back a step farther to the Panopolitan name of this most 
ancient God of the Egyptians, Khem (Gr. Pan ; Latin, Priapus), the deity 
of plants and herbs and of the creative principle. A cultivated Egyptian 
would, doubtless, have regarded all these Amens as merely local or sym- 
bolical types of a single deity. 



324 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The dress of the King is very rich in colour; the mitre- 
shaped casque being of a vivid cobalt-blue^ picked out with 
gold-colour ; the belt, necklace, armlets, and bracelets, of gold, 
studded apparently with precious stones ; the apron, green 
and gold. Over the King's head hovers the sacred vulture, 
emblem of Maut, holding in her claws a kind of scutcheon 
upon which is dei)icted the crux ansata. 

SOUTH WALL. 

The subjects represented on this wall are as follows : — 

1. Rameses, life-size, presiding over a table of offerings. 
The king wears upon his head the klaft, or head-cloth, striped 
gold and white, and decorated with the urseus. The table 
is piled in the usual way with flesh, fowl, and flowers. The 
surface being here quite perfect, the details of these objects 
are seen to be rendered with surprising minuteness. Even, 
the tiny black feather-stumps of the plucked geese are given 
with the fldelity of Chinese art ; while a red gash in the 
breast of each shows in what way it was slain for the sacri- 
fice. The loaves are shaped precisely like the so-called 
" cottage-loaves " of to-day, and have the same little depres- 
sion in the top, made by the baker's finger. Lotus and papy- 
rus blossoms in elaborate bouquet-holders crown the pile. 

2. Two tripods of light and elegant design, containing 
flowers. 

3. The Bari, or sacred boat, painted gold-colour, with the 
usual veil half-drawn across the naos, or shrine ; the prow 

1 The material of this blue helmet, so frequently depicted on the monu- 
ments, may have been the Homeric Kuanos, about which so much doubt 
and conjecture have gathered, and which Mr. Gladstone supposes to have 
been a metal. — (See Juventxis Mvndi, chap. xv. p. 532.) A paragraph in 
The Academy (June 8, 1876) gives the following particulars of certain per- 
forated lamps of a " blue metallic substance," discovered at Hissarlik by 
Dr. Schliemann, and there found lying under the copper shields to which 
they had probably been attached. " An analytical examination by Lan- 
derer {Berg. Hiittenm. Zeitung, xxxiv. 430) has shown them to be sul- 
phide of copper. The art of colouring the metal was known to the copper- 
smiths of Corinth, who plunged the heated copper into the fountain of 
Peirene. It appears not impossible that this was a sulphur spring, and 
that the blue colour may have been given to the metal by plunging it in a 
heated state into the water and converting the surface into cojjper sul- 
phide." 

It is to be observed that the Pharaohs are almost always represented 
wearing this blue helmet in the battle-pieces, and that it is frequently 
studded with gold rings. It must therefore have been of metal. If not 
of sulphuretted copper, it may have been made of steel, which, in the well- 
known instance of the butcher's sharpener, as well as in representations of 
certain weapons, is always painted blue upon the monuments. 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 



325 



of the boat being richly carved, decorated Avith the Uta^ or 
symbolic eye, and preceded by a large fan of ostrich feathers. 
The boat is peopled with small black iigures, one of which 
kneels at the stern ; Avhile a sphinx couchant, with black 
body and human head, keeps watch at the prow. The 
sphinx symbolises the king.^ 

On this wall, in a space between the sacred boat and the 
figure of Rameses, occurs the following inscription, sculptured 
in high relief and elaborately coloured : — 




Note. — This inscription reads according to 
the numbering of the columns, beginning at 
1 and reading to the right ; then resuming at 7 
and reading to the left. The spaces lettered 
A B in the lowest figure of column 6 are filled 
in with the two cartouches of Eameses II. 



^J^J 



1 " This eye, called nta, was extensively used by the Egyptians both as 
an ornament and amulet during life, and as a Sepulchral amulet. They 
are found in the form of right eyes and left eyes, and they symbolise the 
eyes of Horus, as he looks to the N. and S. horizons in his passage from E. 
to W., i.e. from sunrise to sunset. 

M. Grebaut, in his translation of a hymn to Amen-Ra, observes : "Le 
soleil marchant d'Orient en Occident eclaire de ses deux yeux les deux 
regio7is du Nord et du Midi." — Revue Arch. vol. xxv. 1873 ; p. 387. 

'^ See an accurate facsimile of this Bari, i)i chromo-lithography, in Mr. 
Villiers Stuart's " Nile Gleanings : " Murray, 1879. 



326 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



TRANSLATION. 

Said by Thoth, the Lord of Sesennu ^ [residing] in Amen- 
heri,^ — I give to thee an everlasting sovereignty over the Two 
Countries, Son of [my] body, Beloved, Ka-user-ma Sotep- 
en-Ka, acting as propitiator of thy Ka. I give to thee myriads 
of festivals of Rameses beloved of Amen, Ra-user-ma Sotep- 
en-Ra, as prince of every place where the sun-disk revolves. 
The beautiful living God, maker of beautiful things for [his] 
father Thoth Lord of Sesennu [residing] in Amenheri. He 
made mighty and beautiful monuments for ever facing the 
eastern horizon of heaven. 

The meaning of which is that Thoth, addressing Rameses 
II, then living and reigning, promises him a long life and 
many anniversaries of his jubilee,* in return for the works 
made in his (Thoth's) honour at Abou Siinbel and elsewhere. 

NORTH WALL. 

At the upper end of this wall is depicted a life-sized female 
figure wearing an elaborate blue head-dress surmounted by 
a disk and two ostrich feathers. She holds in her right hand 
the ankh, and in her left the jackal-headed sceptre. This not 
being the sceptre of a goddess, and the head-dress resembling 
that of the Queen as represented on the fayade of the Temple 
of E athor, I conclude we have here a portrait of Kefertari 
corresponding to the portrait of Rameses on the opposite 
wall. Near her stands a table of offerings, on which, among 
other objects, are placed four vases of a rich blue colour 
traversed by bands of yellow. They perhaps represent the 
kind of glass known as the false murrhine.^ Each of these 
vases contains an object like a pine, the ground-colour of 
which is deep yellow, patterned over with scale-like subdivis- 

' Tliis inscription was translated for the first edition of this booli by the 
late Dr. Birch ; for the pi-esent translation I am indebted to the courtesy 
of E. A. "Wallis Budge, Esq. 

2 Sesi nnu — Eshnioon or Hermopolis. 

^ Amenhei-i — Gehel Addeh. 

* These jubilees, or festivals of thirty years, were religious jubilees in 
celebration of each thirtieth anniversary of the accession of the reigning 
Pharaoh. 

5 There are, in the British Museum, some bottles and vases of this de- 
scription, dating from the XVIIIth Dynasty; see Case E, Second Egyptian 
Room. They are of dark blue translucent glass, veined with waving lines 
of opaque white and yellow. 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIM BEL. 327 

ions in vermilion. We took them to represent grains of 
maize pyramidally piled. 

Lastly, a pendant to that on the opposite wall, comes the 
sacred Bari. It is, however, turned the reverse way, with its 
prow towards the east ; and it rests upon an altar, in the 
centre of which are the cartouches of Rameses II and a 
small hieroglyphic inscription signifiying : "Beloved by 
Amen-Ra, King of the Gods resident in the Land of 
Kenus." ^ 

Beyond this point, at the end nearest the north-east corner 
of the chamber, the piled sand conceals whatever else the 
wall may contain in the way of decoration. 

EAST WALL, 

If the east wall is decorated like the others (which may be 
taken for granted), its tableaux and inscriptions are hidden 
behind the sand which here rises to the ceiling. The door- 
way also occurs in this wall, occupying a space 4 feet 3| inches 
in width on the inner side. 

One of the most interesting incidents connected with the 
excavation of this little adytum remains yet to be told. 

I have described the female figure at the upper end of the 
north wall, and how she holds in her right hand the ankh and 
in her left the jackal-headed sceptre. The hand that holds 
the ankh hangs by her side ; the hand that holds the sceptre 
is half raised. Close under this upraised hand, at a height 
of between three and four feet from the actual level of the 
floor, there were visible upon the uncoloured surface of the 
original stucco several lines of free-hand writing. This 
writing was laid on, apparently, with the brush, and the ink, 
if ever it had been black, had now become brown. Five 
long lines and three shorter lines were uninjured. Below 
these were traces of other fragmentary lines, almost obliter 
ated by the sand. 

We knew at once that this quaint faint writing must be m 
either the hieratic or demotic hand. We could distinguish, 
or thought we could distinguish, in its vague outlines of 
forms already familiar to us in the hieroglyphs — abstracts, 
as it were, of birds and snakes and boats. There could be 
no doubt, at all events, that the thing was curious ; and Ave 
set it down in our own minds as the writing of either the 
architect or decorator of the place. 

^ Kenus — Nubia. 



328 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Anxious to make, if possible, an exact facsimile of this 
inscription, the Writer copied it three times. The last and 
best of tliese copies is here reproduced in photolithography, 
with a translation from the pen of the late Dr. Birch. We 
all know how difficult it is to copy correctly in a language 
of which one is ignorant ; and the tiniest curve or dot omit- 
ted is fatal to the sense of these ancient characters. In the 
present instance, notwithstanding the care with which the 
transcript was made, there must still have been errors ; for 
it has been found undecipherable in places ; and in these 
places there occur inevitable lacunae. 

Enough, however, remains to show that the lines were 
written, not as we had supposed by the artist, but by a dis- 
tinguished visitor, whose name unfortunately is illegible. 
This visitor was a son of the Prince of Kush, or as it is liter- 
ally written, the Royal Son of Kush ; that being the official 
title of the Governor of Ethiopia.^ As there were certainly 
eight governors of Ethiopia during the reign of Eameses II 
(and perhaps more, whose names have not reached us), it is 
impossible even to hazard a guess at the parentage of our 
visitor. We gather, however, that he was sent hither to 
construct a road ; also that he built transport boats; and that 
he exercised priestly functions in that part of the Temple 
which was inaccessible to all but dignitaries of the sacerdotal 
order. 

Site, inscriptions, and decorations taken into account, there 
yet remains this question to be answered : — 

What was the nature and character of the monument just 
described ? 

It adjoined a pylon, and, as we have seen, consisted of a 
vaulted pronaos in crude brick, and an adytum excavated in 
the rock. On the walls of this adytum are depicted various 
Gods with their attributes, votive offerings, and portraits of 
the King performing acts of adoration. The Bari, or ark, is 
also represented upon the north and south walls of the 

1 Governors of Ethiopia bore this title, even though they did not them- 
selves belong to the family of the Pharaoh. 

It is a curious fact that one of the Governors of Ethiopia during the 
reign of Rameses II was called Mes, or Messou, signifying son, or child — 
which is in fact Moses. Now the Moses of the Bible was adopted by 
Pharaoh's daughter, " became to her as a son," was instructed in the 
wisdom of the Egyptians, and married a Kushite woman, black but comely. 
It would perhaps be too much to speculate on the poss.b.lity of his having 
held the office of Governor, or Royal Son of Kush. 



0-^'^'" 



BISCOVEEIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 329 



X^4l^.^^ -^ 









HIERATIC INSCRIPTION, 

N. WALL OF SPEOS. 

Translated by S. Birch, Esq., LL.D. etc., etc. 



.... thy son having thou hast conquered the worlds 

at once Aiiimon Ka-Hannachis,i the God at the first 
time,'^ who gives Hfe, liealth, and a time of many 

praises to tlie groom of tlie Klien,^ son of t lie 

Koyal son of Cusli,* Opener of the road, Malier 
of transport boats, Giver of instructions to his Lord 
Aniensliaa 



^ i.e. Ammon Ra, tlie Sun God, in conjunction or identification with 
Har-em-axu, of Horus-on-the-Horizon, another Solar deity. 
2 The primaeval God. 
s Inner place, or Sanctuary. 
4 Ethiopia. 



330 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. ' 

adytum. These are unquestionably the ordinary features of 
a temple, or chapel. 

On the other hand, there must be noted certain objections 
to these premises. It seemed to us that the pylon was built 
first, and that the south boundary wall of the pronaos, being 
a subsequent erection, was supported against the slope of 
the pylon as far as where the spring of the vaulting began. 
Besides which, the pylon would have been a disproportion- 
ately large adjunct to a little monument the entire length of 
which, from the doorway of the pronaos to the west wall of 
the adytum, was less than 47 feet. We therefore concluded 
that the pylon belonged to the large temple, and was erected 
at the side, instead of in front of the facade, on account of 
the very narrow space between the mountain and the river.^ 

The pylon at Kom Ombo is, probably for the same reason, 
placed at the side of the Temple and on a lower level. To 
those who might object that a brick pylon would hardly be 
attached to a temple of the first class, I would observe that 
the remains of a similar pylon are still to be seen at the top 
of what Avas once the landing-place leading to the Great 
Temple at Wady Halfeh. It may, therefore, be assumed 
that this little monument, although connected with the pylon 
by means of a doorway and staircase, was an excrescence of 
later date. 

Being an excrescence, however, was it, in the strict sense 
of the word, a temple ? 

Even this seems to be doubtful. In the adytum there is no 
trace of any altar — no fragment of stone dais or sculptured 
image — no granite shrine, as at Philse — no sacred recess, 
as at Denderah. The standard of Horus Aroeris, engraven 
on page 322, occupies the centre place upon the wall facing 
the entrance, and occupies it, not as a tutelary divinity, but 
as a decorative device to separate the two large subjects 
already described. Again, the Gods represented in these 
subjects are Ka and Amen-Ra, the tutelary Gods of the Great 
Temple ; but if we turn to the dedicatory inscription on page 
325 we find that Thoth, whose image never occurs at all upon 
the walls ^ (unless as one of the little Gods in the cornice), 
is really the presiding deity of the place. It is he who wel- 

1 At about an equal distance to the north of the Great Temple, on the 
verge of the bank, is a shapeless block of brick ruin, which might possibly, 
if investigated, turn out to be the remains of a second pylon corresponding 
to this which we partially uncovered to the south. 

2 He may, however, be represented on the north wall, where it is 
covered by the sand-heap. 




Great Temple -Abqu 3imbel_ 



M 



'•*''J*^5^".'^"^ 



DISCOVEltlES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 331 

comes Rameses and his offerings ; who acknowledges the 
" glory " given to him by his beloved son ; and who, in return 
for the great and good monuments erected in his honour, 
promises the king that he shall be given an "everlasting 
sovereignty over the Two Countries." 

Now Thoth was, par excellence, the God of Letters. He 
is styled tlie Lord of Divine Words; the Lord of the Sacred 
Writings ; the Spouse of Truth. He personifies the Divine 
Intelligence. He is tlie patron of art and science; and he is 
credited with the invention of the alphabet. In one of the 
most interesting of Champollion's letters from Thebes,^ he 
relates how, in the fragmentary ruins of the western extrem- 
ity of the Ramesseum, he found a doorway adorned with the 
figures of Thoth and Safek ; Thoth as the God of Literature, 
and Safek inscribed with the title of Lady President of the 
Hall of Books. At Denderah, there is a chamber especially 
set apart for the sacred writings, and its walls are sculptured 
all over with a catalogue raisonnee of the manuscript treas- 
ures of the Temple. At Edfii, a kind of closet built up 
between two pillars of the Hall of Assembly was reserved for 
the same purpose. Every temple, in short, had its library ; 
and as the Egyptian books — being written on papyrus or 
leather, rolled up, and stored in coffers — occupied but little 
space, the rooms appropriated to this purpose were generally 
small. 

It was Dr. Birch's opinion that our little monument may 
have been the library of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel. 
This being the case, the absence of an altar, and the pres- 
ence of Ra and Amen-Ra in the two principal tableaux, are 
sufficiently accounted for. The tutelary deity of the Great 
Temple and the patron deity of Rameses II would naturally 
occupy, in this subsidiary structure, the same places that 
they occupy in the principal one; while the library, though 
in one sense the domain of Thoth, is still under the protec- 
tion of the gods of the Temple to which it is an adjunct. 

I do not believe we once asked ourselves how it came to 
pass that the place had remained hidden all these ages long ; 
yet its very freshness proved how early it must have been 
abandoned. If it had been open in the time of the succes- 
sors of Rameses II, they would probably, as elsewhere, have 
interpolated inscriptions and cartouches, or have substituted 
their own cartouches for those of the founder. If it had 
been open in the time of the Ptolemies and Csesars, travel- 

1 Letter XIV, p. 235. Novvelle Ed. Paris, 1868. 



332 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

ling Greeks and learned Romans, and strangers from Byzan- 
tium and the cities of Asia Minor, would have cut their 
names on the door-jarabs and scribbled ex-votos on the walls. 
If it had been open in the days of Nubian Christianity, the 
sculptures would have been coated with mud, and washed 
with lime, and daubed with pious caricatures of St. George 
and the Holy Family. But we foiind it intact — as perfectly 
preserved as a tomb that had lain hidden under the rocky 
bed of the desert. For these reasons I am inclined to think 
that it became inaccessible shortly after it was completed. 
There can be little doubt that a wave of earthquake passed, 
during the reign of Kameses II, along the left bank of the 
Nile, beginning possibly above Wady Halfeli, and extending 
at least as far north as Gerf Hossayn. Such a shock might 
have wrecked the Temple at Wady Half eh, as it dislocated 
the pylon of Wady Sabooah, and shook the built-out porticoes 
of Derr and Gerf Hossayn ; Avhich last four Temples, as they 
do not, I believe, show signs of having been added to by later 
Pharaohs, may be supposed to have been abandoned in eon- 
sequence of the ruin which had befallen them. Here, at all 
events, it shook the mountain of the Great Temple, cracked 
one of the Osiride columns of the First Hall,-* shattered 
one of the four great Colossi, more or less injured the other 
three, flung down the great brick pylon, reduced the pronaos 
of the library to a heap of ruin, and not only brought 
down part of the ceiling of the excavated adytum, but rent 
open a vertical fissure in the rock, some 20 or 25 feet in 
length. 

With so much irreparable damage done to the Great 
Temple, and with so anach that was reparable calling for 
immediate attention, it is no wonder that these brick build- 
ings were left to their fate. Tlie priests would have rescued 

1 That this shock of earthquake occHrred during the lifetime of Rameses 
II seems to be proven by tlie fact that, where the Osiride column is 
cracked across, a wall has been built up to support the two last pillars to 
the left at the iipper end of the great hall, on which wall is a large stela 
covered with an elaborate hieroglyphic inscription, dating from the xxxvth 
year, and the 13th day of the month of Tybi, of the reign of Rameses II. 
The right arm of the external colossus, to the right of tlie gi-eat doorway, 
has also been supported by the introduction of an ann to his throne, built 
up of square blocks ; this being the only arm to any of the thrones. Miss 
Martineau detected a restoration of part of the lower jaw of the northei^n- 
most colossus, and also a part of the dress of one of the Osiride statues in 
the great hall. I have in my possession a photograph taken at a time when 
the sand was several feet lower than at present, which shows that the right 
leg of the northernmost colossus is also a restoration on a gigantic scale, 
being built up, like the throne-arm, in great blocks, and finished, most 
Ijrobably, afterwards. 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 333 

the sacred books from among the ruins, and then the place 
would have been abandoned. 

So much by way of conjecture. As hypothesis, a sufficient 
reason is perhaps suggested for the wonderful state of pres- 
ervation in which the little chamber had been handed down 
to the present time. A rational explanation is also offered 
for the absence of later cartouches, of Greek and Latin ex- 
votos, of Christian emblems, and of subsequent mutilation 
of every kind. For, save that one contemporary visitor — 
the son of the Royal Son of Kush — the place contained, 
when we opened it, no record of any passing traveller, no 
defacing autograph of tourist, archaeologist, or scientific 
explorer. Neither Belzoni nor ChampoUion had found it 
out. Even Lepsius had passed it by. 

It happens sometimes that hidden tilings, which in them- 
selves are easy to find, escape detection because no one thinks 
of looking for them. But such was not the case in this 
present instance. Search had been made here again and 
again; and even quite recently. 

It seems that wlien the Khedive * entertains distinguished 
guests and sends them in gorgeous dahabeeyahs up the Nile, 
he grants them a virgin mound, or so many square feet of a 
famous necropolis ; lets them dig as deep as they please ; and 
allows them to keep whatever they may find. Sometimes he 
sends out scouts to beat the ground ; and then a tomb is 
found and left unopened, and the illustrious visitor is allowed 
to discover it. When the scouts are unlucky, it may even 
sometimes happen that an old tomb is re-stocked ; carefully 
closed up ; and then, with all the charm of unpremeditation, 
re-opened a day or two after. 

Now Sheykh Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef told us that 
in 1869, when the Empress of the French was at Abou 
Simbel, and again when the Prince and Princess of Wales 
came up in 1872, after the Prince's illness, he received strict 
orders to find some hitherto undiscovered tomb,^ in order 
that the Khedive's guests might have the satisfaction of 
opening it. But, he added, although he left no likely place 
untried among the rocks and valleys on both sides of the 
river, he could find nothing. To have uneartlied such a 
Birbeh as this, would have done him good service with the 

^ This refers to the Ex-Khedive, Ismail Pasha, who ruled Egypt at the 
time when thishook was written and published. [Note to Second Edition.] 

2 There are tombs in some of the ravines behind the Temples, which, 
however, we did not see. 



334 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Government, and have ensured him a splendid bakhshish from 
Prince or En:ipress. As it was, he was reprimanded for want 
of diligence, and he believed himself to have been out of 
favour ever since. 

I may here mention — in order to have done with this 
subject — that besides being buried outside to a depth of 
about eight feet, the adytum had been partially filled inside 
by a gradual infiltration of sand from above. This can only 
have accumulated at the time when the old sand-drift was at 
its highest. That drift, sweeping in one unbroken line across 
the front of the Great Temple, must at one time have risen 
here to a height of twenty feet above the present level. 
From thence the sand had found its way down the perpen- 
dicular fissure already mentioned. In the corner behind the 
door, the sand-pile rose to the ceiling, in shape just like the 
deposit at the bottom of an hour-glass. I am informed by 
the Painter that when the top of the doorway was found and 
an opening first effected, the sand poured out from within, 
like water escaping from an opened sluice. 

Here, then, is positive proof (if proof were needed) that 
Ave were first to enter the place, at all events since the time 
when the great sand-drift rose as high as the top of the 
fissure. 

The Painter wrote his name and ours, with the date (Feb- 
ruary 16th, 1874), on a space of blank wall over the inside 
of the doorway ; and this was the only occasion upon which 
any of us left our names upon an Egyptian monument. On 
arriving at Korosko, where there is a post-office, he also 
despatched a letter to the Times, briefly recording the 
facts here related. That letter, which appeared on the 18th 
of March following, is reprinted in the Appendix at the end 
of this book. 

I am told that our names are partially effaced, and that 
the wall-paintings which we had the happiness of admiring 
in all their beauty and freshness, are already much injured. 
Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. 
The toiirist carves it all over with names and dates, and in 
some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, 
by taking wet paper " squeezes," sponges away every vestige 
of the original colour. The "collector" buys and carries olf 
everything of value that he can get ; and the Arab steals for 
him. The work of destruction, meanwhile, goes on apace. 
There is no one to prevent it ; there is no one to discourage it. 
Every day, more inscriptions are mutilated — more tombs are 



DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 335 

rifled — more paintings and sculptures are defaced. The 
Louvre contains a full-length portrait of Seti I, cut out bodily 
from the walls of his sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of 
the Kings. The Museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence, are 
rich in spoils which tell their own lamentable tale. When 
science leads the Avay, is it wonderful that ignorance should 
follow ? 



336 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 

There are fourteen Temples between Abou Simbel and 
Philse ; to say nothing of grottoes, tombs, and other ruins. 
As a rule, people begin to get tired of Temples about this 
time, and vote them too plentiful. Meek travellers go through 
them as a duty ; but the greater number rebel. Our Happy 
Couple, I grieve to say, went over to the majority. Dead 
to shame, they openly proclaimed themselves bored. They 
even skipped several Temples. 

For myself, I was never bored by them. Though they 
had been twice as many, I should not have wished them 
fewer. Miss Martineau tells how, in this part of the river, 
she was scarcely satisfied to sit down to breakfast without 
having first explored a Temple ; but I could have break- 
fasted, dined, supped on Temples. My appetite for them 
was insatiable, and grew with Avhat it fed upon. I went 
over them all. I took notes of them all. I sketched them 
every one. 

I may as well say at once that I shall reproduce but few 
of those notes, and only some of those sketches, in the pres- 
ent volume. If, surrounded by their local associations, these 
ruins fail to interest many who travel far to see them, it is 
not to be supposed that they would interest readers at home. 
Here and there, perhaps, might be one who would care to 
pore with me over every broken sculpture ; to spell out every 
half-legible cartouche ; to trace through Greek and Roman 
influences (which are nowhere more conspicuous than in these 
Nubian buildings) the slow deterioration of the Egyptian 
style. But the world for the most part reserves itself, and 
rightly, for the great epochs and the great names of the 
past ; and because it has not yet had too much of Karnak, of 
Abou Simbel, of the Pyramids, it sets slight store by those 
minor monuments which record the periods of foreign rule 
and the decline of native art. 

For these reasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very 




Temple dfAmada. 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 337 

briefly many places upon which I bestoAved hours of delight- 
ful labour. 

We left Abou Simbel just as the moon was rising on the 
evening of the 18th of February, and dropped down with the 
current for three or four miles before mooring for the night. 
At six next morning the men began rowing ; and at half-past 
eight, the heads of the Colossi were still looking placidly 
after us across a ridge of intervening hills. They were then 
more than five miles distant in a direct line ; but every fea- 
ture was still distinct in the early daylight. One went up 
again and again, as long as they remained in sight, and bade 
good-bye to them at last with that same heartache which 
comes of a farewell view of the Alps. 

When I say that we were seventeen days getting from 
Abou Simbel to Philse, and that we had the wind against us 
from sunrise till sunset almost every day, it will be seen that 
our progress was of the slowest. To those who were tired 
of Temples, and to the crew who were running short of 
bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of 
rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary 
enough. 

Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by. 
Sometimes the barren desert hems us in to right and left, 
with never a blade of green between the rock and the river. 
Sometimes, as at Tosko,^ we come upon an open tract, where 
there are palms, and castor-berry plantations, and corn-fields 
alive with quail. The Idle Man goes ashore at Tosko with 
his gun, while the Little Lady and the Writer climb a soli- 
tary rock about 200 feet above the river. The bank shelves 
here, and a crescent-like wave of inundation, about three 
miles in length, overflows it every season. From this height 
one sees exactly how far the wave goes, and how it must 
make a little bay when it is there. Now it is a bay of bar- 
ley, full to the brim, and rippling with the breeze. Beyond 
the green comes the desert ; the one defined against the other 
as sharply as water against land. The desert looks wonder- 
fully old beside the young green of the corn, and the Nile 
flows wide among sand-banks, like a tidal river near the sea. 
The village, squared off in parallelograms, like a cattle-mar- 
ket, lies mapped out below. A field-glass shows that the 
houses are simply cloistered courtyards roofed with palm- 
thatch ; the sheykh's house being larger than the rest, with 

1 Tosko is on the eastern bank, and not, as in Keith Johnston's map, on 
the west. 



338 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



the usual open space and spreading sycamore in front. 
There are women moving to and fro in tlie courtyards, and 
husbandmen in the castor-berry patches. A funeral with a 
train of wallers goes out presently towards the burial-ground 
on the edge of the desert. The Idle Man, a slight figure 
with a veil twisted round his hat, wades, half-hidden, through 
the barley, signalling his whereabouts every now and then 
by a puff of white smoke. A cargo-boat, stripped and shorn, 
comes floating down the river, making no visible progress. 
A native felucca, carrying one tattered brown sail, goes 
swiftly up with the wind at a pace that will bring her to 




TEMPLE OF AJIADA. 



Abou Simbel before nightfall. Already she is past the vil- 
lage ; and those black specks yonder, which we had never 
dreamed were crocodiles, have slipped off into the water at 
her approach. And now she is far in the distance — that 
glowing, illimitable distance — traversed by long silvery 
reaches of river, and ending in a vast flat, so blue and aerial 
that, but for some three or four notches of purple peaks on 
the horizon, one could scarcely discern the point at which 
land and sky melt into each other. 

Ibrim comes next ; then Derr ; then Wady Sabooah. At 
Ibrim, as at Derr, there are "fair" families, whose hideous 
light hair and blue eyes (grafted on brown-black skins) date 
back to Bosnian forefathers of 360 years ago. These people 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 339 

give themselves airs, and are the haicte noblesse of the place. 
The men are lazy and quarrelsome. The women trail longer 
robe's, wear more beads and rings, and are altogether more 
unattractive and castor-oily than any we have seen elsewhere. 
Tliey keep slaves, too. ^Ve saw these unfortunates trotting 
at the heels of their mistresses, like dogs. Knowing slavery 
to be officially illegal in the dominions of the Khedive, the 
M. B.'s applied to a dealer, who offered them an Abyssinian 
girl for ten pounds. This useful article — warranted a bar- 
gain — was to sweep, wash, milk, and churn; but was not 
equal to cooking. The M. 13. 's, it is needless to add, having 
verified the facts, retired from the transaction. 

At Derr we pay a farewell visit to the Temple ; and at 
Amada, arriving towards close of day, see the great view 
for the last time in the glory of sunset. 

And now, though the north wind blows persistently, it gets 
hotter every day. The crocodiles like it, and come out to 
bask in the sunshine. Called up one morning in the middle 
of breakfast we see two — a little one and a big one — on a 
sand-bank near by. The men rest upon their oars. The 
boat goes with the stream. No one speaks ; no one moves. 
Breathlessly and in dead silence, we drift on till we are 
close beside them. The big one is rough and black, like the 
trunk of a London elm, and measures full eighteen feet in- 
length. The little one is pale and greenish, and glistens 
like glass. All at once, the old one starts, doubles itself up 
for a spring, and disappears with a tremendous splash. But 
the little one, apparently unconscious of danger, lifts its 
tortoise-like head, and eyes us sidewise. Presently some one 
whispers ; and that whisper breaks the spell. Our little 
crocodile flings up its tail, plunges down the bank, and is 
gone in a moment. 

The crew could not understand how the Idle Man, after 
lying in wait for crocodiles at Abou Simbel, should let this 
rare chance pass without a shot. But we had heard since 
then of so much indiscriminate slaughter at the Second 
Cataract, that he was resolved to bear no part in the exter- 
mination of those old historic reptiles. That a sportsman 
should wish for a single trophy is not unreasonable ; but 
that scores of -crack shots should go up every winter, 
killing and Avounding these wretched brutes at an average 
rate of from twelve to eighteen per gun, is mere butchery, 
and cannot be too strongly reprehended. Year by year, the 
creatures become shyer and fewer ; and the day is probably 



340 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

not far distant when a crocodile will be as rarely seen below 
Semneh as it is now rarely seen below Assuan. 

The thermometer stands at 85° in the saloon of the Philae, 
when we come one afternoon to Wady Sabooah, where there 
is a solitary Temple drowned in sand. It was approached 
once by an avenue of sphinxes and standing colossi, now 
shattered and buried. The roof of the pronaos, if ever it 
was roofed, is gone. The inner halls and the sanctuary — 
all excavated in the rock — are choked and impassable. 
Only the propylon stands clear of sand ; and that, massive as 
it is, looks as if one touch of a battering-ram would bring 
it to the ground. Every huge stone in it is loose. Every 
block in the cornice seems tottering in its place. In all this, 
we fancy we recognise the work of our'Abou Simbel earth- 
quake.^ 

At Wady Sabooah we see a fat native. The fact claims 
record, because it is so uncommon. A stalwart middle-aged 
man, dressed in a tattered kilt and carrying a palm-staff in his 
hand, he stands before us the living double of the famous 
wooden statue at Boulak. He is followed by his two wives 
and three or four children, all bent upon trade. The women 
have trinkets, the boys a live chameleon and a small stuffed 
crocodile for sale. While the Painter is bargaining for the 
crocodile and L. for a nose-ring, the Writer makes acquaint- 
ance with a pair of self-important hoopoes, who live in the 
pylon, and evidently regard it as a big nest of tlieir own build- 
ing. They sit observing me curiously while I sketch, nodding 
their crested polls and chattering disparagingly, like a couple 
of critics. By and by comes a small black bird with a white 
breast, and sings deliciously. It is like no little bird tliat I 
have ever seen before ; but the song that it pours so lavishly 
from its tiny throat is as sweet and brilliant as a canary's. 

Powerless against the wind, the dahabeeyah lies idle day 
after day in the sun. Sometimes, when Ave chance to be near 
a village, the natives sqitat on the bank, and stare at us for 
hours together. The moment any one appears on deck, they 

1 This is one of the Temples erected by Rameses the Great, and, I 
believe, not added to by any of his successors. The colossi, the Osiride 
columns, the sphinxes (now battered out of all human semblance) were 
originally made in his image. The cartouches are all his, and in one of 
the inner chambers there is a list of his little family. All these chambers 
were accessible till three or- four years ago, when a party of German 
travellers carried off some sculptured tablets of great archseological interest ; 
after which act of spoliation the entrance was sanded up by order of 
Mariette Bey. See also, with regard to the probable date of the earthquake 
at this place, chap, xviii. p. 332. 



HACK TflROUGH NUBIA. 



341 



burst into a chorus of •'Bakhshish !" There is but one way 
to get rid of tliem, and that is to sketch them. The effect is 
instantaneous. With a good-sized block and a pencil, a whole 
village may be put to flight at a moment's notice. If on the 
other hand one wishes for a model, the difficulty is insuper- 
able. The Painter tried in vain to get some of the women 
and girls (not a few of whom were really pretty) to sit for 
their portraits. I well remember one haughty beauty, shaped 
and draped like a Juno, who stood on the bank one morning, 




TUMPLE OK WADY SABOOAII. 



scornfully watching all that was done on deck. She carried 
a flat basket back-handed ; and her arms were covered with 
bracelets, and her fingers with rings. Her little girl, in a 
Madame Nubia fringe, clung to her skirts, half wondering, 
half frightened. The Painter sent out an ambassador pleni- 
potentiary to offer her anything from sixpence to half-a-sov- 
ereign, if she would only stand like that for half an hour. 
The manner of her refusal was grand. She drew her shawl 
over her face, took her child's hand, and stalked away like an 
offended goddess. The Writer, meanwhile, hidden behind a 
curtain, had snatched a tiny sketch from the cabin-window. 
On the western bank, somewhere between Wady Sabooah 



342 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

and Maharrakeh, in a spot quite bare of vegetation, stand the 
ruins of a fortified town wliich is neither mentioned by Murray 
nor entered in the maps. It is built high on a base of reddish 
rock, and commands the river and the desert. The Painter 
and Writer explored it one afternoon, in the course of a long 
ramble. Climbing first a steep slope strewn with masonry, 
we came to the remains of a stone gateway. Finding this 
impassable, we made our way through a breach in the battle- 
mented wall, and thence up a narrow road down which had 
been poured a cataract of debris. Skirting a ruined postern 
at the top of this road, we found ourselves in a close labyrinth 
of vaulted arcades built of crude brick and lit at short inter- 
vals by openings in the roof. These strange streets — for 
they were streets — were lined on either side by small dwell- 
ings built of crude brick on stone foundations. We went into 
some of the houses — mere ruined courts and roofless cham- 
bers, in which were no indications of hearths or staircases. 
In one lay a fragment of stone column about 14 inches in 
diameter. The air in these ancient streets was foul and 
stagnant, and the ground was everywhere lieaped with frag- 
ments of black, red, and yellowish pottery, like the shards of 
Elephantine and Philae. A more desolate place in a more 
desolate situation I never saw. It looked as if it had been 
besieged, sacked, and abandoned, a thousand years ago ; which 
is probably under the mark, for the character of the pottery 
would seem to point to the period of Roman occupation. 
Noting how the brick superstructures were reared on appar- 
ently earlier masonry, we concluded that the beginnings of 
this place were probably Egyptian, and the later work Roman. 
The marvel was that any town should have been built in 
so barren a spot, there being not so much as an inch-wide bor- 
der of lentils for a mile or more between the river and the 
desert. 

Having traversed the place from end to end, we came out 
through another breach on the westward side, and, thinking to 
find a sketchable point of view inland, struck down towards 
the plain. In order to reach this, one first must skirt a deep 
ravine which divides the rock of the citadel from the desert. 
Following the brink of this ravine to the point at which it falls 
into the level, we found to our great surprise that we were 
treading the banks of an extinct river. 

It was full of sand now; but beyond all question it had 
once been full of water. It came, evidently, from the moun- 
tains over towards the north-west. We could trace its 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 343 

windings for a long way across the plain, thence through the 
ravine, and on southwards in a line parallel with the IS'ile. 
Here, beneath our feet, were the water-worn rocks through 
which it had fretted its way ; and yonder, half-buried in sand, 
were the boulders it had rounded and polished, and borne 
along in its course. I doubt, however, if when it was a river 
of water, this stream was half as beautiful as now, when it is 
a river of sand. Is was turbid then, no doubt, and charged 
with sediment. ISTow it is more golden than Pactolus, and 
covered with ripples more playful and undulating than were 
ever modelled by Canaletti's pencil. 

Supposing yonder town to have been founded in the days 
when the river was a river, and the plain fertile and well 
watered, the mystery of its position is explained. It was pro- 
tected in front by the Nile, and in the rear by the ravine and 
the river. But how long ago was this ? Here apparently was 
an independent stream, taking its rise among the Libyan 
mountains. It dated back, consequently, to a time when those 
barren hills collected and distributed water — that is to say, to 
a time when it used to rain in Niibia. And that time must 
have been before the rocky barrier broke down at Silsilis, in 
the old days when the land of Kush flowed with milk and 
honey. ^ 

It would rain even now in Nubia, if it could. That same 
evening when the sun was setting, we saw a fan-like drift of 
dappled cloud miles high above our heads, melting, as it 
seemed, in fringes of iridescent vapour. We could distinctly 
see those fringes forming, wavering, and evaporating ; unable 
to descend as rain, because dispersed at a high altitude by 
radiated heat from the desert. This, with one exception, was 
the only occasion on which I saw clouds in Nubia. 

Coming back, we met a solitary native, with a string of 
beads in his hand and a knife up his sleeve. He followed us 
for a long way, volunteering a but half-intelligible story about 
some unknown Birbeh ^ in the desert. We asked where it 
was, and he pointed up the course of our unknown river. 

" You have seen it ? " said the Painter. 

" Marrat ketir" (many times). 

" How far is it ? " 

"One day's march in the hagar" (desert). 

1 Not only near this nameless town, but in many other parts between 
Abou Simbel and Philfe, we found the old alluvial soil lying as high as 
from 20 to 30 feet above the level of the present inundations. 

2 Ar. Birbeh, Temple. 



344 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

" And have no Ingleezeh ever been to look for it ?" 

He shook his head at first, not understanding the question; 
tlien looked grave and held up one finger. 

Our stock of Arabic was so small, and his so interlarded 
with Kensee, that we had great difficulty in making out what 
he said next. We gathered, however, that some Howadji, 
travelling alone and on foot, had once gone in search of this 
Eirbeh, and never come back. Was he lost ? Was he killed ? 
— Who could say ? 

" It was a long time ago," said the man with the 
beads. '■' It was a long time ago, and he took no guide with 
him." 

We would have given much to trace the river to its source, 
and search for this unknown temple in the desert. But it is 
one of the misfortunes of this kind of travelling that one can- 
not easily turn aside from the beaten track. The hot season 
is approaching ; the river is running low ; the daily cost of 
the dahabeeyah is exorbitant ; and in Nubia, where little 
or nothing can be bought in the way of food, the dilatory 
traveller risks starvation. It Avas something, however, to 
have seen with one's own eyes that the Nile, instead of flow- 
ing for a distance of 1200 miles unfed by any affluent, had 
here received the waters of a tributary.^ 

To those who have a south breeze behind them, the temples 
must now follow in quick succession. We, however, achieved 
them by degrees, and rejoiced when our helpless dahabeeyah 
lay within rowing reach of anything worth seeing. Thus we 
pull down one day to Mabarrakeh — in itself a dull ruin ; but 
picturesquely desolate. Seen as one comes up the bank 
on landing, two parallel rows of columns stand boldly up 
against the sky, supporting a ruined entablature. In the 
foreground, a few stunted Dom-palms starve in an arid soil. 
The barren desert closes in the distance. 

AVe are beset here by an insolent crowd of savage-look- 
ing men and boys, and impudent girls with long frizzy hair 
and Nubian fringes, who pester us with beads and pebbles ; 
dance, shout, slap their legs and clap their hands in our 
faces ; and pelt us when we go away. One ragged war- 

1 "The Nile receives its last tributary, the Atbara, in Lat. 17° 42' N., 
at the northern extremity of the peninsular tract anciently called the island 
of Meroe, and thence flows N. ( a single stream without the least accession) 
through 12 degrees of latitude ; or, following its winding course, at least 
1200 miles, to the sea." — Blackie's Imperial Gazetteer, 1861. A careful 
survey of the country would probably bring to light the dry beds of many 
more such tributaries as the one described above. 



BACK THEOUGII NUBIA. 345 

rior brandishes an antique brass-mounted firelock full six 
foot long in the barrel, and some of the others carry slender 
spears. 

The Temple — a late Roman structure — would seem to 
have been wrecked by earthquake before it was completed. 
The masonry is all in the rough — pillars as they came from 
the quarry; capitals blocked out, waiting for the carver. 
These unfinished ruins — of which every stone looks new, as 
if the work was still in progress — affect one's imagination 
strangely. , On a fallen wall south of the portico, the Idle 
Man detected some remains of a Greek inscription; ^ but for 
hieroglyphic characters, or cartouches by which to date the 
building, we looked in vain.^ 

Dakkeh comes next in order ; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor 
and Kalabsheh. Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise, Ave 
find the whole population — screaming, pushing, chattering, 
laden with eggs, pigeons, and gourds for sale — drawn up to 
receive us. There is a large sand island in the way here ; so 
we moor about a mile above the Temple. 

We first saw the twin pylons of Dakkeh some weeks ago 
from the deck of the Philae, and we them likened them to 
the majestic towers of Edfu. Approaching them now by 
land, we are surprised to find them so small. It is a bril- 
liant, hot morning; and our way lies by the river, between 
the lentil slope and the castor-berry patches. There are 
flocks of pigeons flying low overhead ; barking dogs and crow- 
ing cocks in the village close by; and all over the path, hun- 
dreds of beetles — real, live scarabs, black as coal and busy as 

1 Of this wall, Burckhardt notices that " it has fallen clown, apparently 
from some sudden and violent concussion, as the stones are lying on the 
ground in layers, as when placed in the wall ; a proof that they must h^ve 
fallen all at once." — Travels in Nubia : Ed. 1819, p. 100. But he has not 
observed the inscription, which is in large characters, and consists of three 
lines on three separate layers of stones. The Idle Man copied the original 
upon the spot, which copy has since been identified with an ex-voto of a 
Roman soldier published in Boeckh's Corpus Inscr. Grsec, of which the 
following is a translation : — 

" The vow of Verecundus the soldier, and his most pious parents, and 
Gains his little brother, and the rest of his brethren." 

2 A clue, however, might possibly be found to the date. There is a rudely 
sculptured tableau — the only piece of sculpture in the place — on a detached 
wall near the standing columns. It represents Isis worshipped by a youth 
in a short toga. Both figui-es are lumpish and ill-modelled ; and Isis, 
seated under a conventional fig-tree, wears her hair erected in stiff rolls 
over the forehead, like a diadem. It is the face and stiffly dressed hair of 
Marciana, the sister of Trajan, as shown upon the well-known coin engraved 
in Smith's Die. of Greek and Roman Biography, vol. ii. p. 939. Maharra- 
keh is the Hiera Sycaminos, or Place of the Sacred Fig-tree, where ends 
the Itinerary of Antoninus. 



346 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



ants — rolling their clay pellets up from the water's edge to 
the desert. If we were to examine a score or so of these 
pellets, we should here and there find one that contained no 
eggs ; for it is a carious fact that the scarab-beetle makes and 
rolls her pellets whether she has an e§^ to deposit or not. 
The female bettle, though assisted by the male, is said to do 
the heavier share of the pellet-rolling; and if evening comes 
on before her pellet is safely stowed away, she will sleep hold- 
ing it with her feet all night, and resume her labour in the 
morning.^ 

The Temple here — begun by an Ethiopian king named 
Arkaman (Ergamenes), about whom Diodorus has a long 
story to tell, and carried on by the Ptolemies and Caesars — 
stands in a desolate open space to 
the north of the village, and is ap- 
proached by an avenue, the walls of 
which are constructed with blocks 
from some other earlier building. 
The whole of this avenue and all the 
waste ground for three or four hun- 
dred yards round about the Temple, 
is not merely strewn but piled with 
fragments of pottery, pebbles, and 
large smooth stones of porphyry, 
alabaster, basalt, and a kind of mar- 
ble like verde antico. These stones 
are puzzling. They look as if they 
might be fragments of statues that 
y , I ^_ had been rolled and polished by ages 

^— /y| I , r~ -^ of friction in the bed of a torrent. 
' ' Among the potsherds we find some 

inscribed fragments, like those of 
Elephantine.^ Of the Temple I will 
only say that, as masonry, it is better put together than any 
work of the XVIlIth or XlXth Dynasties with which I am 
acquainted. The sculptures, however, are atrocious. Such 
misshapen hieroglyphs ; such dumpy, smirking goddesses ; 
such clownish kings in such preposterous head-dresses, we 

1 See " The Scardbseris Sacer" by C. Woodrooffe, B.A., — a paper (based 
on notes by the late Rev. C. Johns) read before the Winchester and Hamp- 
shire Scientific and Literary Society, Nov. 8, 1875. Privately printed. 

2 See chap. x. p. 177. Dakkeh (the Pselcis of the Greeks and Romans, 
the Pselk of the Egyptians) was at one time regarded as the confine of 
Egypt and Ethiopia, and would seem to have been a great military station. 
The inscribed potsherds here are chiefly receipts and accounts of soldiers' 




BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 347 

have never seen till now. The whole thing, in short, as re- 
gards sculpturesque style, is the Ptolemaic out-Ptolemied. 

Rowing round presently to Kobban — the river running 
wide, with the sand island between — we land under the 
walls of a huge crude-brick structure, black with age, which 
at fii'st sight looks quite shapeless ; but which proves to be 
an ancient Egyptian fortress, buttressed, towered, loopholed, 
iinished at the angles with the invariable moulded torus, and 
surrounded by a deep dry moat, which is probably yet filled 
each summer by the inundation. 

Now of all rare things in the valley of the Nile, a purely 
secular ruin is the rarest; and this, with the exception of 
some foundations of dwellings here and there, is the first we 
have seen. It is probably very, very old ; as old as the days of 
Thothmes III, whose name is found on some scattered blocks 
about a quarter of a mile away, and who built two similar 
fortresses at Semneh, tliirty-five miles above Wady Halfeh. 
It may even be a thousand years older still, and date from 
the time of Amenemhat III, whose name is also found on a 
stela near Kobban.^ For here was once au ancient city, 
when Pseicis (now Dakkeh) was but a new suburb on the 
opposite bank. The name of this ancient city is lost, but it 
is by some supposed to be identical with the Metacompso of 

pay. The walls of the Temple outside, and of the chambers within, abound 
also in free-hand graffiti, most of which are written in red ink. We 
observed some that ai)peared to be trilingual. The writer copied the two 
following from over a doorway. The first is supposed by Dr. Birch to be 
in Ethiopian demotic, and is apparently a name. The characters of the 
second appear to be quite unknown ; — 

1 " Less than a quarter of a mile to the south are the ruins of a small 
sandstone Temple with clustered columns; and on the way, near the 
village, you pass a stone stela of Amenemha III, mentioning his eleventh 
year." — Mvrray's Handbook for Eijypt, p. 481. M. Maspero, writing of 
Thothmes III, says, " Sons fils et successeur, Amenhotep III, fit construire 
en face de Pselkisune forteresse importante." — Hist Ancienne des Peitplen 
de P Orient. Chap. iii. p. 113. 

At Kobban also was found the famous stela of Rameses II, called the 
Stela of Dakkeh ; see chap. xv. p. 253. In this inscription, a cast from 
which is at the Ijouvre, Rameses II is stated to have caused an artesian 
well to be made in the desert between this place and Gebel Oellaky, in 
order to facilitate the working of the gold mines of those parts. 



348 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Ptolemy.^ As the suburb grew, the mother town declined, 
and in time, the suburb became the city, and the city became 
the suburb. The scattered blocks aforesaid, together with 
the remains of a small Temple, yet mark the position of 
the elder city. 

The walls of this most curious and interesting fortress 
have probably lost much of their original height. They are 
in some parts 30 feet thick, and nowhere less than 20. Ver- 
tical on the inside, they are built at a buttress-slope outside, 
with additional shallow buttresses at regular distances. 
These last, as they can scarcely add to the enormous strength 
of the original wall, were probably designed for effect. There 
are two entrances to the fortress ; one in the centre of the 
north wall, and one in the south. We enter the enclosure by 
the last named, and find ourselves in the midst of an im- 
mense parallelogram measuring about 450 feet from east to 
west, and perhaps 300 feet from north to south. 

All within these bounds is a wilderness of ruin. The 
space looks large enough for a city, and contains what might 
be the debris of a dozen cities. We climb huge mounds of 
rubbish ; skirt cataracts of broken pottery ; and stand on the 

1 " According to Ptolemy, Metachompso should be opposite Pselcis, 
where there are extensive brick ruins. If so, Metachompso and Contra 
Pselcis must be the same town." — Tonocpmphii of Thebes, etc.; Sir G. 
"Wilkinson. Ed. 1835, p. 488. M. Vivien de St. Martin is, however, of 
opinion that the island of Derar, near Maharrakeh, is the true Meta- 
chompso. See he Nord de VAfriqve, section vi. p. IGl. Be this as it may, 
we at all events know of one great siege that this fortress sustained, and 
of one great battle fought beneath its walls. "The Ethiopians," says 
Strabo, "having taken advantage of the withdrawal of part of the Roman 
forces, surprised and took Syene, Elephantine, and Philse, enslaved the 
inhabitants, and threw dowji the statues of Caesar. But Petronius, march- 
ing with less than 10,000 infantry and 800 horse against an army of 30,000 
men, compelled them to retreat to Pselcis. He then sent deputies to 
demand restitution of what they had taken, and the reasons which had 
induced them to begin the war. On their alleging that they had been ill 
treated by the monarchs, he answered that these were not the sovereigns 
of the country — but Caesar. When they desired three days for considera- 
tion and did nothing which they were bound to do, Petronius attacked 
and compelled them to fight. They soon fled, being badly commanded 
and badly armed, for they carried large shields made of raw hides, and 
hatchets for offensive weapons. Part of the insurgents were driven into 
the city, others fled into the uninhabited country, and such as ventured 
upon the passage of the river escaped to a neighbouring island, where there 
were not many crocodiles, on account of the current. . . . Petronius then 
attacked Pselcis, and took it." — Strabo's Geof/raphy , Bohn's translation, 
1857, vol. iii. pp. 267-8. This island to which the insurgents fled may have 
been the large sand island which here still occupies the middle of the river, 
and obstructs the approach to Dakkeh. Or they may have fled to the 
island of Derar, seven miles higher up. Strabo does not give the name 
of the island. 



BACK THROUGH NUBTA. 349 

brink of excavated pits, honeycombed forty feet below with 
brick foundations. Over these mounds and at the bottom 
of these pits, swarm men, women, and children, tilling and 
carrying away basket-loads of rubble. The dust rises in 
clouds. The noise, the heat, the confusion, are indescribable. 
One pauses, bewildered, seeking in vain to discover in this 
mighty maze any indication of a plan. It is only by an 
effort that one gradually realises how the place is but a vast 
shell, and how all these mounds and pits mark the site of 
what was once a huge edifice rising tower above tower to a 
central keep, such as we see represented in the battle-subjects 
of Abou Simbel and Thebes. 

That towered edifice and central keep — quarried, broken 
up, carried away piecemeal, reduced to powder, and spread 
over the land as manure — has now disappeared almost to 
its foundations. Only the well in the middle of the en- 
closure, and the great wall of circuit, remain. That wall is 
doomed, and will by and by share the fate of the rest. The 
well, which must have been very deep, is choked with rub- 
bish to the brim. Meanwhile, in order to realise what the 
place in its present condition is like, one need but imagine 
how the Tower of London would look if the whole of the 
inner buildings — White Tower, Chapel, Armoury, Governor's 
Quarters and all — were levelled in shapeless ruin, and only 
the outer walls and moat were left. 

Built up against the inner side of the wall of circuit are 
the remains of a series of massive towers, the tops of which, 
as they are, strangely enough, shorter than the external 
structure, can never have communicated with the battle- 
ments, unless by ladders. The finest of these towers to- 
gether with a magnificent fragment of wall, faces the eastern 
desert. 

Going out by the north entrance, we find the sides of the 
gateway, and even the steps leading down into the moat, in 
perfect preservation; while at the base of the great wall, on 
the outer side facing the river, there yet remains a channel 
or conduit about two feet square, built and roofed with stone, 
which in Murray is described as a water-gate. 

The sun is high, the heat is overwhelming, the felucca 
waits ; and we turn reluctantly away, knowing that between 
here and Cairo we shall see no more curious relic of the far- 
off past than this dismantled stronghold. It is a mere moun- 
tain of unburnt brick ; altogether unlovely ; admirable only 
for the gigantic strength of its proportions ; pathetic only in 



350 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the abjectness of its ruin. Yet it brings the lost ages home 
to one's imagination in a way that no Temple could evei* 
bring them. It dispels for a moment the historic glamour 
of the sculptures, and compels us to remember those name- 
less and forgotten millions, of whom their rulers fashioned 
soldiers in time of war and builders in time of peace. 

Our adventures by the way are few and far between ; and 
we now rarely meet a dahabeeyah. Birds are more plentiful 
than when we were in this part of the river a few weeks ago. 
We see immense flights of black and white cranes congre- 
gated at night on the sand-banks ; and any number of quail 
may be had for the shooting. It is matter for rejoicing when 
the Idle Man goes out Avith his gun and brings home a full 
bag; for our last sheep was killed before we started for 
Wady Halfeh, and our last poultry ceased cackling at Aboa 
Simbel. 

One morning early, we see a bride taken across the river 
in a big boat full of women and girls, who are clapping their 
hands and shrilling the tremiilotis zaghareet. The bride — 
a chocolate beauty with magnificent eyes — wears a gold 
brow-pendant and nose-ring, and has her hair newly plaited 
in hundreds of tails, finished off at the ends with mtid pellets 
daubed with yellow ochre. She stands surrounded by her 
companions, proud of her finery, and pleased to be stared at 
by the Ingleezeh. 

About this time, also, we see one night a wild sox't of festi- 
val going- on for some miles along both sides of the river. 
Watch-fires break out towards twilight, first on this bank, 
then on that; becoming brighter and more numerous as the 
darkness deepens. By and by, when we are going to bed, 
we hear sounds of drumming on the eastern bank, and see 
from afar a torchlight procession and dance. The effect of 
this dance of torches — for it is only the torches that are 
visible — is quite diabolic. The lights fiit and leap as if 
they were alive; circling, clustering, dispersing, bobbing, 
poussetting, pursuing each other at a gallop, and whirling 
every now and then through the air, like rockets. Late as 
it is, we would fain put ashore and see this orgy more nearly ; 
but Eeis Hassan shakes his head. The natives hereabout 
are said to be quarrelsome ; and if, as it is probable, they 
are celebrating the festival of some local saint, we might be 
treated as intruders. 

Coming at early morning to Gerf Hossayn, we make our 
way up to the Temple, which is excavated in the face of a 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 



351 




352 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE N^LE 



limestone cliff, a couple of hundred feet, perhaps, above the 
river. A steep path, glaring hot in the sun, leads to a ter- 
race in the rock ; the temple being approached through the 
ruins of a built-out portico and an avenue of battered colossi. 
It is a gloomy place within — an inferior edition, so to say, 
of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel; and of the same date. 
It consists of a first hall supported by Osiride pillars, a 
second and smaller hall with square columns ; a smoke- 
blackened sanctuary; and two side-chambers. The Osiride 
colossi, which stand 20 feet high without the entablature 




TEJll'Ly: OF DENDOOll. 



over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick- 
set, bow-legged, and misshapen. Their faces would seem 
to have been painted black originally ; while those of the 
avenue outside have distinctly Ethiopian features. One 
seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady Sabooah, the 
work of provincial sculptors ; just as at Abou Simbel one 
recognises the master-style of the artists of the Theban 
Ramesseum. 

The side-chambers at Gerf Hossayn are infested with bats. 
These bats are the great sight of the place, and have their 
appointed showman. We find him waiting for us with an 
end of tarred rope, which he flings, blazing, into the pitch- 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 353 

dark doorway. For a moment we see the whole ceiling hung, 
as it were, with a close fringe of white, tilmy-looking pen- 
dants. But it is only for a moment. The next instant the 
creatures are all in motion, dashing out madly in our faces 
like driven snowflakes. We picked up a dead one afterwards, 
when the rush was over, and examined it by the outer day- 
light — a lovely little creature, white and downy, with hue 
transparent wings, and little pink feet, and the prettiest 
mousey mouth imaginable. 

Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias, and henna-bushes, the 
cliffs between Gerf Hossayn and Dendoor stand out in de- 
tached masses so like ruins that sometimes we can hardly 
believe they are rocks. At Dendoor, when the sun is setting 
and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valle}^, we visit a 
tiny Temple on the western bank. It stands out above the 
river surrounded by a wall of enclosure, and consists of a 
single pylon, a portico, two little chambers, and a sanctuary. 
The whole thing is like an exquisite toy, so covered with 
sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so admirably built. 
Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it matters not that 
these delicately-wrought bas-reliefs are of the Decadence 
school.* The rosy half-light of an Egyptian after-glow 
covers a multitude of sins, and steeps the whole in an at- 
mosphere of romance. 

Wondering what has happened to the climate, we wake 
shivering next morning an hour or so before break of day, 
and, for the first time in several weeks, taste the old early 
chill upon the air. When the sun rises, we find ourselves at 
Kalabsheh, having passed the limit of the Tropic during the 
night. Henceforth, no matter how great the heat may be 
by day, this chill invariably comes with the dark hour before 
dawn. 

The usual yelling crowd, with the usual beads, baskets, 
eggs, and pigeons, for sale, greets us on the shore at Kalab- 
sheh. One of the men has a fine old two-handed sword in a 
shabby blue velvet sheath, for which he asks five napoleons. 
It looks as if it might have belonged to a crusader. Some of 
the women bring buffalo-cream in filthy -looking black skins 
slung round their waists like girdles. The cream is excel- 

1 " C'est un ouvrage non aclieve du temps de I'empereur Auguste. 
Quoique peu important par son etendue, ce monument m'a beaucoup inte- 
resse, puisqu'il est entierement relatif a I'incarnation d'Osiris sous forme 
humaine, sur la terre." — Lettres Rentes d'Egypte, etc.: Champollion. 
Paris, 1868, p. 120. 



354 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



lent ; but the skins temper one's enjoyment of the unaccus- 
tomed dainty. 

There is a magnificent Temple here, and close by, exca- 
vated in the cliff, a rock-cut Speos, the local name of which is 
Bayt-el-Weli. The sculptures of this famous Speos have 
been more frequently described and engraved than almost 
any sculptures in Egypt. The procession of Ethio})ian trib- 
ute-dealers, the assault of the Amorite city, the Triumph of 
Rameses, are familiar not only to every reader of Wilkinson, 
but to every visitor passing through the Egyptian Rooms of 
the British Museum. Notwithstanding the casts that have 





been taken from them, and the ill-treatment to which' they 
have been subjected by natives and visitors, they are still 
beautiful. The colour of tliose in the roofless courtyard, 
though so perfect when Bonomi executed his admirable 
facsimiles, has now almost entirely peeled off ; but in the 
portico and inner chambers it is yet brilliant. An emerald 
green Osiris, a crimson Anubis, and an Isis of the brightest 
chrome yellow, are astonisliingly pure and forcible in qual- 
ity. As for the flesh-tones of the Anubis, this was, I believe, 
the only instance I observed of a true crimson in Egyptian 
pigments. 

Between the Speos of Bayt-el- Welly and the neighbouring 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 



355 




356 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Temple of Kalabsheh there lies about half-a-mile of hilly- 
pathway and a gulf of 1400 years. Rameses ushers us into 
the presence of Augustus, and we pass, as it were, from an 
oratory in the Great House of Pharaoh to the presence- 
chamber of the Caesars. 

But if the decorative work in the presence-chamber of the 
Caesars was anything like the decorative work in the Temple 
of Kalabsheh, then the taste thereof was of the vilest. Such 
a masquerade of deities ; such striped and spotted and cross- 
barred robes ; such outrageous head-dresses ; such crude and 
violent colouring, ^ we have never seen the like of. As for 
the goddesses, they are gaudier than the dancing damsels of 
Luxor ; while the kings balance on their heads diadems com- 
pounded of horns, moons, birds, balls, beetles, lotus-blossoms, 
asps, vases, and feathers. The Temple, however, is conceived 
on a grand scale. It is the Karnak of Nubia. But it is a 
Karnak that has evidently been visited by a shock of earth- 
quake far more severe than that which shook the mighty 
pillars of the Hypostyle Hall and flung down the obelisk of 
Hatasu. From the river, it looks like a huge fortress ; but 
seen from the threshold of the main gateway, it is a wilder- 
ness of ruin. Fallen blocks, pillars, capitals, entablatures, 
lie so extravagantly piled, that there is not one spot in all 
those halls and courtyards upon which it is possible to set 
one's foot on the level of the original pavement. Here, 
again, the earthquake seems to have come before the work 
was completed. There are figures outlined on the walls, but 
never sculptured. Others have been begun, but never fin- 
ished. You can see where the chisel stopped — you can even 
detect which was the last mark it made on the surface. 
One traces here, in fact, the four processes of wall decora- 
tion. In some places the space is squared off and ruled 
by the mechanic ; in others, the subject is ready drawn 
within those spaces by the artist. Here tlie sculptor has 
carried it a stage farther ; yonder the painter has begun to 
colour it. 

More interesting, however, than aught else at Kalabsheh 
is the Greek inscription of Silco of Ethiopia.^ This inscrip- 
tion — made famous by the commentaries of Niebuhr and 
Letronne — was discovered by M. Gau in a.d. 1818. It con- 
sists of 21 lines very neatly written in red ink, and it dates 

1 I observed mauve here, for the first and only time ; and very brilliant 
ultramarine. There are also traces of gilding on many of the figures. 

2 See chap. xii. p. 214. 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 357 

from the sixth century of the Christian era. It commences 
thus : — 

I, Silco, puissant king of the Nubians and all the Ethiopians, 
I came twice as far as Talmisi and Tapliis.^ 
I fought against the Blemyes,^ and God granted me the victory. 
T vanquislied them a second time; and tlie first time 
I establislied myself completely with my troops. 
I vanquished them, and they supplicated me. 
I made peace with them; and they swore to me by their idols. 
I trusted them ; because they are a people of good faith. 
Then I returned to my dominions in the Upper Country, 
For I am a king. 

Not only am I no follower in the train of other kings, 
But I go before them. 
As for those who seek strife against me, 

I give them no peace in their lionies till they entreat my pardon. 
For I am a lion on the plains, and a goat upon the mountains, 
etc. etc. etc. 

The historical value of this inscription is very great. It 
shows that in the sixth century, while the native inhabitants 
of this part of the Valley of the Nile yet adhered to the 
ancient Egyptian faith, the Ethiopians of the south were 
professedly Christian. 

The descendants of the Blemmys are a fine race ; tall, 
strong, and of a rich chocolate complexion. Strolling 
through the village at sunset, we see the entire population 
— old men sitting at their doors; young men lounging and 
smoking ; children at play. The women, with glittering 
white teeth and liquid eyes, and a profusion of gold and 
silver ornaments on neck and brow, come out with their 
little brown babies astride on hip or shoulder, to stare as 
we go by. One sick old woman, lying outside her hut on a 
pahn-wood couch, raises herself for a moment on her elbow — 
then sinks back with a weary sigh, and turns her face to the 
wall. The mud dwellings here are built in and out of a 
maze of massive stone foundations, the remains of buildings 
once magnificent. Some of these walls are built in concave 
courses ; each course of stones, that is to say, being depressed 
in the centre, and raised at the angles ; which mode of con- 

1 Talmis: (Kalabsheh). 2 Taphis: (Tafah), 

3 Blemyes : — The Blemyes were a nomadic race of Berbers, supposed 
to be originally of the tribes of Bilmas of Tibbous in the central desert, and 
settled as early as the time of Eratosthenes in that part of the Valley of 
the Nile which lies between the First and Second Cataracts. See Le Nord 
de I'Afrique, by M. V. de St. Martin. Paris, 1863, Section III, p. 73. 



358 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



sbruction was adopted in order to offer less resistance when 
shaken by earthquake.^ 

We observe more foundations built thus, at Tafah, where 
we arrive next morning. As the masons' Avork at Tafah is 
of late Roman date, it follows that earthquakes were yet 
frequent in Nubia at a period long subsequent to the great 
shock of B.C. 27, mentioned by Eusebius. Travellers are too 
ready to ascribe everything in the way of ruin to the fury 
of Cambyses and the pious rage of the early Christians. 
Nothing, however, is easier than to distinguish between the 
damage done to the monuments by the hand of man and the 




UUINED TEMPLE AT TAFAH, NUBIA. 



damage caused by subterraneous upheaval. Mutilation is 
the rule in the one case; displacement in the other. At 
Denderah, for example, the injury done is wholly wilful ; at 
Abou Simbel, it is wholly accidental ; at Karnak, it is both 
wilful and accidental. As for Kalabsheh, it is clear that no 
such tremendous havoc could have been effected by human 
means without the aid of powerful rams, fire, or gunpowder ; 
any of Avhich must have left unmistakable traces. 

At Tafah there are two little temples ; one in picturesque 
ruin, one quite perfect, and now used as a stable. There are 
also a number of stone foundations, separate, quadrangular, 

1 See The Habitations of Man in all Ages. V. le Due. Chap. ix. p. 93. 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 359 

subdivided into numerous small chambers, and enclosed in 
boundary walls, some of which are built in the concave 
courses just named. These substructions, of which the 
Painter counted eighteen, have long been the puzzle of 
travellers.^ 

Tafah is charmingly placed ; and the seven miles which 
divide it from Kalabsheh — once, no doubt, the scene of a 
cataract — are perhaps the most picturesque on this side of 
Wady Halfeh. Rocky islets in the river ; palm-groves, 
acacias, carobs, henna and castor-berry bushes, and all kinds 
of flowering shrubs, along the edges of the banks ; fantastic 
precipices riven and pinnacled, here rising abruptly from the 
Avater's edge, and there from the sandy plain, make lovely 
sketches whichever way one turns. There are gazelles, it is 
said, in the ravines behind Tafah; and one of the natives — 
a truculent fellow in a ragged shirt and dirty white turban 
— tells how, at a distance of three hours up a certain glen, 
there is another Birbeh, larger than either of these in the 
plain, and a great standing statue taller than three men. 
Here, then, if the tale bs true, is another ready-made dis- 
covery for whoever may care to undertake it. 

This same native, having sold a necklace to the Idle Man 
and gone away content with his bargain, comes back by and 
by with half the village at his heels, requiring double price. 
This modest demand being refused, he rages up and down 
like a maniac ; tears off his turban ; goes through a wild 
manual exercise with his spear ; then sits down in stately 
silence, with his friends and neighbours drawn up in a semi- 
circle behind him. 

This, it seems, is Nubian for a challenge. He has thrown 
down his gauntlet in form, and demands trial by combat. 
The noisy crowd, meanwhile, increases every moment. ReTs 
Hassan looks grave, fearing a possible fracas ; and the Idle 
Man, who is reading the morning service down below (for 
it is on a Sunday morning), can scarcely be heard for the 

1 They probably mark the site of a certain Coptic monastery described 
in an ancient Arabic MS. quoted by E. Quatremere, which says that " in 
the town of Tafah there is a fine monastery called the monastery of 
Ansoun. It is very ancient; but so solidly built, that after so great a 
number of years it still stands uninjured. Near this monastery, facing the 
mountain, are situated fifteen villages." See Memoires Hist, et Geogra- 
phiqiies sur I'Egypte et le Nubie, par E. Quatremere. Paris, 1811, vol. ii. 
p. 55. 

The monastery and the villages were, doubtless, of Romano-Egyptian 
construction in the first instance, and may originally have been a sacred 
College, like the sacred College at Philse. 



360 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

clamour outside. In this emergency, it occurs to the Writer 
to send a message ashore informing these gentlemen that 
the Howadjis are holding mosque in the dahabeeyah, and 
entreating them to be quiet till the hour of prayer is past. 
The effect of the message, strange to say, is instantaneous. 
The angry voices are at once hushed. The challenger puts 
on his turban. The assembled spectators squat in respect- 
ful silence on the bank. A whole hour goes by thus, so giv- 
ing the storm time to blow over ; and when the Idle Man 
reappears on deck, his would-be adversary comes forward 
quite pleasantly to discuss the purchase afresh. 

It matters little how the affair ended ; but I believe he 
was offered his necklace back in exchange for the money 
paid, and preferred to abide by his bargain. It is as evi- 
dence of the sincerity of the religious sentiment in the 
minds of a semi-savage people, ^ that I have thought the inci- 
dent worth telling. 

We are now less than forty miles from Philae ; but the 
head wind is always against us, and the men's bread is 
exhausted, and there is no flour to be bought in these 
Nubian villages. The poor fellows swept out the last crumbs 
from the bottom of their bread-chest three or four days ago, 
and are now living on quater-rations of lentil soup and a 
few dried dates bought at Wady Halfeh. Patient and 
depressed, they crouch silently beside their oars, or forget 
their hunger in sleep. For ourselves, it is painful to wit- 
ness their need, and still more painful to be unable to help 
them. Talhamy, whose own stores are at a low ebb, vows 
he can do nothing. It would take his few remaining tins of 
preserved meat to feed fifteen men for two days, and of flour 
he has barely enough for the Howadjis. Hungry ? well, 
yes — no doubt they are hungry. But what of that ? They 
are Arabs ; and Arabs bear hunger as camels bear thirst. It 
is nothing new to them. They have often been hungry 
before — they will often be hungry again. Enough ! It is 
not for the ladies to trouble themselves about such fellows 
as these ! 

Excellent advice, no doubt ; but hard to follow. Not to 

1 " The peasants of Tafa relate that they are the descendants of the 
few Christian inhabitants of the city who embraced the Mohammedan faith 
when the countiy was conquered by the followers of the Prophet; the 
greater part of their brethren having either fled or been put to death on 
that event taking place. They are still called Oulad el Nusara, or the 
Christian progeny." — Travels in Nubia: Burckhardt. London, 1819, 
p. 121. 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 



361 



be troubled, and not to do what little we can do for the poor 
lads, is impossible. When that little means laying violent 
hands on Talhamy's reserve of eggs and biscuits, and getting 
up lotteries for prizes of chocolate and tobacco, that worthy 
evidently considers that we have taken leave of our wits. 

Under a burning sky, we touch for an hour or two at 
Gertassee, and then push on for Dabod. The limestone 
quarries at Gertassee are full of votive sculptures and in- 
scriptions ; and the little ruin — a mere cluster of graceful 
columns supporting a fragment of cornice — stands high on 
the brink of a cliff overhanging the river. Take it as you 
will, from above or below, looking north or looking south, it 
makes a charminsr sketch. 




TEMPLE OF DABOD. 



If transported to Dabod on that magic carpet of the fairy- 
tale, one would take it for a ruin on the "beached margent" 
of some placid lake in dreamland. It lies between two bends 
of the river, which here flows wide, showing no outlet and 
seeming to be girdled by mountains and palm-groves. The 
Temple is small and uninteresting ; begun, like Dakkeh, by 
an Ethiopian king, and finished by Ptolemies and Csesars. 
The one curious thing about it is a secret cell, most cunningly 
devised. Adjoining the sanctuary is a dark side-chamber; 
in the floor of the side-chamber is a pit, once paved over ; in 
one corner of the pit is a man-hole opening into a narrow 
passage ; and in the narrow passage are steps leading up to 



362 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

a secret chamber constructed in the thickness of the wall. 
We saw other secret chambers in other Temples ; ^ but not 
one in which the old approaches were so perfectly preserved. 

From Dabod to Philse is but ten miles ; and we are bound 
for Torrigur, which is two miles nearer. Now Torrigur is 
that same village at the foot of the beautiful sand-drift, near 
which we moored on our way up the river; and here we are 
to stay two days, followed by at least a week at Philae. No 
sooner, therefore, have we reached Torrigur, than Keis Has- 
san and three sailors start for Assfian to buy flour. Old Ali, 
Iviskalli, and Musa, whose homes lie in the villages round 
•about, get leave of absence for a week; and we find ourselves 
reduced all at once to a crew of live, with only Khaleefeh in 
command. Five, however, are as good as fifty, when the 
dahabeeyah lies moored and there is nothing to do ; and our 
live, having succeeded in buying some flabby Nubian cakes 
and green lentils, are now quite happy. So the Painter 
pitches his tent at the top of the sand-drift; and the A¥riter 
sketches the ruined convent opposite ; and L. and the Little 
Lady write no end of letters ; and the Idle Man with Mehe- 
met Ali for a retriever, shoots quail ; and everybody is satis- 
fied. 

Hapless Idle Man ! — hapless, but homicidal. If he had 
been content to shoot only quail, and had not taken to shoot- 
ing babies ! Wiiat possessed him to do it? Not — not, let 
us hope — an ill-directed ambition, foiled of crocodiles! 
He went serene and smiling, with his gun under his arm, 
and Mehemet Ali in his wake. Who so light of heart as 
that Idle Man ? Who so light of heel as that turbaned re- 
triever ? We heard our sportsman popping away presently 
in the barley. It was a pleasant sound, for we knew his aim 
was true. "Every shot," said we, "means a bird." We 
little dreamed that one of those shots meant a baby. 

All at once, a woman screamed. It was a sharp, sudden 
scream, following a shot — a scream with a ring of horror in 

1 In these secret chambers (the entrance to which was closed by a block 
of masonry so perfectly fitted as to defy detection) were kept the images of 
gold and silver and lapis lazuli, the precious vases, the sistrums, the jew- 
elled collars, and all the portable treasures of the Temples. We saw a 
somewhat similar pit and small chamber in a corner of the Temple of Dak- 
keh, and some very curious crypts and hiding places under the floor of the 
dark chamber to the east of the Sanctuary of Philae, all of course long since 
broken open and rifled. But we had strong reason to believe that the 
Painter discovered the whereabouts of a hidden chamber or passage to the 
west of the Sanctuary, yet closed, with all its treasures probably intact. 
"We had, however, no means of opening the wall, which is of solid masonry. 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 



363 



it. Instantly it was caught up from point to point, growing 
in volume and seeming to be echoed from every direction at 
once. At the same moment, the bank became alive with 
human beings. They seemed to spring from the soil — 
women shrieking and waving their arms ; men running ; all 
making for the same goal. The Writer heard the scream, 
saw the rush, and knew at once that a gun accident liad hap- 
pened. 




KUlXlCn CONVENT (COPTIC) NlCAlt I'HIL.K, 

A few minutes of painful suspense followed. Then Mehe- 
raet Ali appeared, tearing back at the top of his speed; and 
presently — perhaps five minutes later, though it seemed 
like twenty — came the Idle Man ; walking very slowly and 
defiantly, with his head up, his arms folded, his gun gone, 
and an immense rabble at his heels. 

Our scanty crew, armed with sticks, flew at once to the 
rescue, and brought him off in safety. We then learned 
what had happened. 

A flight of quail had risen ; and as quail fly low, skim- 
ming the surface of the grain and diving down again almost 
immediately, he had taken a level aim. At the instant that 



364 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

he fired, and in the very path of the quail, a woman and 
«hild who had been squatting in the barley, sprang up scream- 
ing. He at once saw the coming danger; and, with admi- 
rable presence of mind, drew the charge of his second barrel. 
He then hid his cartridge-box and hugged his gun, deter- 
mined to hold it as long as possible. The next moment he 
was surrounded, overpowered, had the gun wrenched from 
his grasp, and received a blow on the back with a stone. 
Having captured the gun, one or two of the men let go. It 
was then that he shook off the rest, and came back to the 
boat. Mehemet Ali at the same time flew to call a rescue. 
He, too, came in for some hard knocks, besides having his 
shirt rent and his turban torn off his head. 

Here were we, meanwhile, with less than half our crew, a 
private war on our hands, no captain, and one of our three 
guns in the hands of the enemy. What a scene it was ! A 
whole village, apparently a very considerable village, swarm- 
ing on the bank ; all hurrying to and fro ; all raving, shout- 
ing, gesticulating. If we had been on the A-^erge of a fracas 
at Tafah, here we were threatened with a siege. 

Drawing in the plank between the boat and the shore, we 
held a hasty council of war. 

The woman being unhurt, and the child, if hurt at all, hurt 
very slightly, we felt justified in assuming an injured tone, 
calling the village to account for a case of cowardly assault, 
and demanding instant restitution of the gun. We accord- 
ingly sent Talhamy to parley with the head-man of the place 
and peremptorily demand the gun. We also bade him add 

— and this we regarded as a master-stroke of policy — that 
if due submission was immediately made, the Howadji, one 
of whom was a Hakeem, would permit the father to bring 
his child on board to have its hurts attended to. 

Outwardly indifferent, inwardly not a little anxious, we 
waited the event. Talharay's back being towards the river, 
we had the whole semicircle of SAvarthy faces full in view — 
bent brows, flashing eyes, glittering teeth ; all anger, all scorn, 
all defiance. Suddenly the expression of the faces changed 

— tlie change beginning with those nearest the speaker, and 
spreading gradually outwards. It was as if a wave had passed 
over them. We knew then that our coup Avas made. Tal- 
hamy returned. The villagers crowded round their leaders, 
deliberating. Numbers now began to sit down ; and when 
a Nubian sits down, you may be sure that he is no longer 
dangerous. 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 365 

Presently — after perhaps a quarter of an hour — the gun 
was brought back uninjured, and an elderly man carrying a 
blue bundle appeared on the bank. Tlie plank was now put 
across ; the crowd was kept off ; and the man with the bundle, 
and three or four others, were allowed to pass. 

The bundle being undone, a little brown imp of about four 
years of age, with shaven head and shaggy scalp-lock, was 
produced. He whimpered at first, seeing the strange white 
faces ; but when offered a fig, forgot his terrors, and sat 
munching it like a monkey. As for his wounds, they were 
literally skin-deep, the shot having but slightly grazed his 
shoulders in four or five places. The Idle Man, however, 
solemnly sponged the scratches with warm water, and L 
covered them with patches of sticking-plaster. Finally, the 
father was presented with a napoleon ; the patient was 
wrapped in one of his murderer's shirts ; and the first act of 
the tragedy ended. The second and third acts were to come. 

When the Painter and the Idle Man talked the affair over, 
they agreed that it was expedient, for the protection of future 
travellers, to lodge a complaint against the village ; and this 
mainly on account of the treacherous blow dealt from behind, 
at a time when the Idle Man (who had not once attempted to 
defend himself) was powerless in the hands of a mob. They 
therefore went next day to Assuan ; and the Governor, charm- 
ing as ever, promised that justice should be done. Mean- 
while we moved the dahabeeyah to Philae, and there settled 
down for a week's sketching. 

Next evening came a woful deputation from Torrigur, en- 
treating forgiveness, and stating that fifteen villagers had 
been swept off to prison. 

The Idle Man explained that he no longer had anything to 
do with it ; that the matter, in short, was in the hands of 
justice, and would be dealt with according to law. Hereupon 
the spokesman gathered up a handful of imaginary dust, and 
made believe to scatter it on his head. 

"0 dragoman! " he said, "tell the Howadji that there is 
no law but his pleasure, and no justice but the will of the 
Governor." 

Summoned next morning to give evidence, the Idle Man 
went betimes to Assuan, where he was received in private by 
the Governor and Mudir. Pipes and coffee were handed, and 
the usual civilities exchanged. The Governor then informed 
his guest that fifteen men of Torrigtir had been arrested ; and 
that fourteen of them unanimously identified the fifteenth as 
the one who struck the blow. 



366 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

" And now," said the Governor, " before we send for the 
prisoners, it will be as well to decide on the sentence. What 
does his Excellency wish done to them ? " 

The Idle Man was puzzled. How could he offer an opinion, 
being ignorant of the Egyptian civil code ? and how could 
the sentence be decided upon before the trial ? 

The Governor smiled serenely. 

" But," he said, " this is the trial." 

Being an Englishman, it necessarily cost the Idle Man an 
effort to realise the full force of this explanation — an ex- 
planation which, in its sublime simplicity, epitomised the 
whole system of the judicial adminstration of Egyptian law. 
He hastened, however, to explain that he cherished no resent- 
ment against the culprit or the villagers, and that his only 
wish was to frighten them into a due respect for travellers in 
general. 

The Governor hereupon invited the Mudir to suggest a 
sentence; and the Mudir — taking into consideration, as he 
said, his Excellency's lenient disposition — proposed to award 
to the fourteen innocent men one month's imprisonment each; 
and to the real offender two months' imprisonment, with a 
hundred and fifty blows of the bastinado. 

Shocked at the mere idea of such a sentence, the Idle Man 
declared that he must have the innocent set at liberty ; biit 
consented that the culprit, for the sake of example, should be 
sentenced to the one hundred and fifty blows — the punish- 
ment to be remitted after the first few strokes had been dealt. 
Word was now given for the prisoners to be brought in. 

The gaoler marched first, followed by two soldiers. Then 
came the fifteen prisoners — I am ashamed to write it ! — 
chained neck to neck in single file. 

One can imagine how the Idle Man felt at this moment. 

Sentence being pronounced, the fourteen looked as if they 
could hardly believe their ears ; while the fifteenth, though 
condemned to his one hundred and fifty strokes (-'seventy- 
five to each foot," specified the Governor), was overjoyed to 
be let off so easily. 

He was then flung down ; his feet were fastened soles up- 
permost ; and two soldiers proceeded to execute the sentence. 
As each blow fell, he cried : " God save the Governor ! God 
save the Mudir ! God save the Howadji ! " 

When the sixth stroke had been dealt, the Idle Man turned 
to the Governor and formally interceded for the remission of 
the rest of the sentence. The Governor, as formally, granted 



BACK THROUGH NUBIA. 367 

the request ; and the prisoners, weeping for joy, were set at 
liberty. 

The Governor, the Mudir, and tlie Idle Man then parted 
with a profusion of compliments; the Governor protesting 
that his only wish was to be agreeable to the English, and 
that the whole village should have been bastinadoed, had his 
Excellency desired it. 

We spent eight enchanting days at Philae ; and it so hap- 
pened, when the afternoon of the eighth came round, that 
for the last few hours the Writer was alone on the island. 
Alone, that is to say, with only a sailor in attendance, which 
was virtually solitude ; and Philee is a place to which solitude 
adds an inexpressible touch of pathos and remoteness. 




PHIL^ FROM THE SOUTH. 



It has been a hot day, and there is dead calm on the river. 
My last sketch finished, I wander slowly round from spot to 
spot, saying farewell to Pharaoh's Bed — to the Painted Col- 
umns — to every terrace, and palm, and shrine, and familiar 
point of view. I peep once again into the mystic chamber 
of Osiris. I see the sun set for the last time from the roof of 
the Temple of Isis. Then, when all that wondrous flush of 
rose and gold has died away, comes the warm afterglow. No 
words can paint the melancholy beauty of Philse at this hour. 
The surrounding mountains stand out jagged and purple 
against a pale amber sky. The Nile is glassy. Not a breath, 
not a bubble, troubles the inverted landscape. Every palm 
is twofold ; every stone is doubled. The big boulders in 
mid-stream are reflected so perfectly that it is impossible to 
tell where the rock ends and the water begins. The Temples, 
meanwhile, have turned to a subdued golden bronze ; and the 
pylons are peopled with shapes that glow with fantastic life, 
and look ready to step down from their places. 



368 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The solitude is perfect, and there is a magical stillness in 
the air. I hear a mother crooning to her baby on the neigh- 
bouring island — a sparrow twittering in its little nest in 
the capital of a column below my feet — a vulture screaming 
plaintively among the rocks in the far distance. 




NUBIAN WOMAN AND CHILD. 



I look ; I listen ; I promise myself that I will remember it 
all in years to come — all the solemn hills, these silent 
colonnades, these deep, quiet spaces of shadow, these sleep- 
ing palms. Lingering till it is all but dark, I at last bid 
them farewell, fearing lest I may behold them no more. 




SiLSILIS. 



SILSILIS AND EDFU. 369 



CHAPTER XX. 

SILSILIS AND EDFtj. 

Going, it cost us four days to struggle up from Assuan to 
Mahatta; returning, we slid down — thanks to our old friend 
the Sheykh of the Cataract — in one short, sensational half 
hour. He came — flat-faced, fishy-eyed, fatuous as ever — 
with his head tied up in the same old yellow handkerchief, 
and with the same chibouque in his mouth. He brought 
with him a following of fifty stalwart Shellalees ; and under 
his arm he carried a tattered red flag. This flag, on which 
were embroidered the crescent and star, he hoisted with 
much solemnity at the prow. 

Consigned thus to the protection of the Prophet ; windows 
and tambooshy i shuttered up ; doors closed ; breakables 
removed to a place of safety, and everything made snug, as 
if for a storm at sea, we put off from Mahatta at seven a.m. 
on a lovely morning in the middle of March. The Philae, 
instead of threading her way back through the old channels, 
strikes across to the Libyan side, making straight for the 
Big Bab — that formidable rapid which as yet we have not 
seen. All last night we heard its voice in the distance ; now, 
at every stroke of the oars, that rushing sovxnd draws nearer. 

The Sheykh of the Cataract is our captain, and his men 
are our sailors to-day ; Reis Hassan and the crew having 
only to sit still and look on. The Shellalees, meanwhile, 
row swiftly and steadily. Already the river seems to be 
running faster than usual ; already the current feels stronger 
under our keel. And now, suddenly, there is sparkle and 
foam on the surface yonder — there are rocks ahead ; rocks 
to right and left; eddies everywhere. The Sheykh lays 
down his pipe, kicks ©ff his shoes, and goes himself to the 
prow. His second in command is stationed at the top of 
the stairs leading to the upper deck. Six men take the 
tiller. The rowers are reinforced, and sit two to each oar. 

In the midst of these preparations, when everybody looks 

1 Ar. Tambooshy — i.e. saloon sky-light. 



370 ONE THOUSAND MlLEti UP THE NILE. 

grave, and even the Arabs are silent, we ail at once find our- 
selves at the mouth of a long and narrow strait — a kind of 
ravine between two walls of rock — through which, at a 
steep incline, there rushes a roaring mass of waters. The 
whole Nile, in fact, seems to be thundering in wild waves 
down that terrible channel. 

It seems, at first sight, impossible that any dahabeeyah 
should venture that way and not be dashed to pieces. 
Neither does there seem room for boat and oars to pass. 
The Sheykh, however, gives the word — his second echoes 
it — the men at the helm obey. They put the dahabeeyah 
straight at that monster mill-race. For one breathless 
second we seem to tremble on the edge of the fall. Then 
the Philse plunges in headlong ! 

We see the whole boat slope down bodily imder our feet. 
We feel the leap — the dead fall — the staggering rush for- 
ward. Instantly the waves are foaming and boiling up on 
all sides, flooding the lower deck, and covering the upper 
deck with spray. The men ship their oars, leaving all to 
helm and current ; and, despite the hoarse tumult, we dis- 
tinctly hear those oars scrape the rocks on either side. 

Now the Sheykh, looking for the moment quite majestic, 
stands motionless with uplifted arm ; for at the end of the 
pass there is a sharp turn to the right — as sharp as a street 
corner in a narrow London thoroughfare. Can the Philse, 
measuring 100 feet from stem to stern, ever round that angle 
in safety ? Suddenly, the uplifted arm is waved — the Sheykh 
thunders " Daffet ! " (helm) — the men, steady and prompt, 
put the helm about — the boat, answering splendidly to the 
word of command, begins to turn before we are out of the 
rocks ; then, shooting round the corner at exactly the right 
moment, comes out safe and sound, with only an oar broken ! 

Great is the rejoicing. Reis Hassan, in the joy of his 
heart, runs to shake hands all round ; the Arabs burst into 
a chorus of " Taibs " and " Salames; " and Talhamy, coming 
up all smiles, is set upon by half-a-dozen playful Shellalees, 
who snatch his keffiyeh from his head, and carry it off as a 
trophy. The only one unmoved is the Sheykh of the Cataract. 
His momentary flash of energy over, he slouches back with 
the old stolid face ; slips on his shoes ; drops on his heels ; 
lights his pipe; and looks more like an owl than ever. 

We had fancied till now that the Cataract Arabs for their 
own profit, and travellers for their own glory, had grossly 
exasprerated the danerers of the Big Bab. But such is not 



SILSILIS AjyD EDFU. 371 

the case. The Big Bab is in truth a seriovis undertaking ; 
so serious that I doubt whether any English boatmen Avould 
venture to take such a boat down such a rapid, and between 
such rocks, as tlie Shellalee Arabs took the Philse that day. 

All dahabeeyahs, however, are not so lucky. Of thirty- 
four that shot the fall this season, several had been slightly 
damaged, and one was so disabled that she had to lie up at 
Assuan for a fortnight to be mended. Of actual shipwreck, 
or injury to life and limb, I do not suppose there is any real 
danger. The Shellalees are wonderfully cool and skilful, 
and have abundant practice. Our Fainter, it is true, pre- 
ferred rolling up his canvases and carrjdng them round on 
dry land by way of the desert ; but this was a precaution 
that neither he nor any of us would have dreamed of taking 
on account of our own personal safety. There is, in fact, 
little, if anything, to fear ; and the traveller who foregoes 
the descent of the Cataract, foregoes a very curious sight, 
and a very exciting adventure. 

At Assuan we bade farewell to Nubia and the blameless 
Ethiopians, and found ourselves once more traversing the 
Nile of Egypt. If instead of five miles of Cataract we had 
crossed five hundred miles of sea or desert, the change could 
nob have been more complete. We left behind us a dreamy 
river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning, we 
plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and popu- 
lous region. All day long, now, we see boats on the river; 
villages on the banks ; birds on the wing ; husbandmen on 
the land ; men and women, horses, camels and asses, passing 
perpetually to and fro on the towing-patli. There is always 
something moving, something doing. The Nile is running 
low, and the shadufs — three deep, now — are in full swing 
from morning till night. Again the smoke goes up from 
clusters of unseen huts at close of day. Again we hear the 
(logs barking from hamlet to hamlet in the still hours of the 
night. Again, towards sunset, we see troops of girls coming 
down to the river-side with their water-jars on their heads. 
Those Arab maidens, when they stand with garments tightly 
tucked up and just their feet in the water, dipping the 
goollah at arm's length in the fresher gush of the current, 
almost tempt one's pencil into the forbidden paths of cari- 
cature. 

Kom Ombo is a magnificent torso. It was as large once 
as Denderah — perhaps larger ; for, being on the same grand 
scale, it was a double Temple and dedicated to two Gods, 



372 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Horus and. Sebek ; ^ the HaAvk and the Crocodile. Now there 
remain only a few giant columns buried to within eight or ten 
feet of their gorgeous capitals ; a superb fragment of archi- 
trave ; one broken wave of sculptured cornice, and some fallen 
blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras. 

A great double doorway, a hall of columns, and a double 
sanctuary, are said to be yet perfect, though no longer acces- 
sible. The roofing blocks of three halls, one behind the other, 
and a few capitals, are yet visible behind the portico. What 
more may lie buried below the surface, none can tell. We 
only know that an ancient city and a mediaeval hamlet have 
been slowly engulfed ; and that an early Temple, contempo- 
rary with the Temple of Amada, once stood within the sacred 
enclosure. The sand here has been accumulating for 2000 
years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been excavated. 
It will never be excavated now ; for the Nile is gradually 
sapping the bank, and carrying away piecemeal from below 
what the desert has buried from above. Half of one noble 
pylon — a cataract of sculptured blocks — strews the steep 
slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs suspended 
on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer. 
A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash, and 
thunder down like its fellow. 

Between Kom Ombo and Silsilis, we lost our Painter. Not 
that he either strayed or was stolen ; but that, having accom- 
plished the main object of his journey, he was glad to seize 
the first opportunity of getting back quickly to Cairo. That 
opportunity — represented by a noble Duke honeymooning 
with a steam-tug — happened half-way between Kom Ombo 
and Silsilis. Painter and Duke being acquaintances of old, 
the matter was soon settled. In less than a quarter of an 
hour, the big picture and all the paraphernalia of the studio 
were transported from the stern-cabin of the Philse to the stern- 
cabin of the steam-tug ; and our Painter — fitted out with an 
extempore canteen, a cook-boy, a waiter, and his fair share of 
the necessaries of life ■ — was soon disappearing gaily in the 
distance at the rate of twenty miles an hour. If the Happy 
Couple, so weary of head-winds, so satiated with Temples, 
followed that vanishing steam-tug with eyes of melancholy 
longing, the Writer at least asked nothing better than to drift 
on with the Philae. 

1 " Sebek est undieu solaire. Dans un papyrus de Boulak, il est appele 
fils d'Isis, et il combat les emiemis d'Osiris; c'est une assimilation com- 
plete a Horus, et c'est a ce titre qu'il etait adore a Ombos." — Die. Arch. 
P. PiERRET. Paris, 1875, 



SILSILIS AND EDFU. 



373 




374 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Still, the Nile is long, and life is short ; and the tale told 
by our logbook was certainly not encouraging. AVhen we 
reached Silsilis on the morning of the 17th of March, the north 
wind liad been blowing with only one day's intermission since 
the 1st of February. 

At Silsilis, one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier 
which once blocked tiie Nile at this point. The stream is 
narrow here, and the sandstone cliffs come down on both sides 
to the water's edge. In some places there is space for a 
footpath; in others, none. There are also some sunken rocks 
in the bed of the river — upon one of which, by the way, a 
Cook's steamer had struck two days before. But of such a 
mass as could have dammed the Nile, and by its disruption 
not only have caused the river to desert its bed at Philse,^ but 
have changed the whole physical and climatic conditions of 
Lower Nubia, there is no sign whatever. 

The Arabs here show a rock fantastically quarried in the 
shape of a gigantic umbrella, to which they pretend some king 
of old attached one end of a chain with which he barred the 
Nile. It may be that in this apocryphal legend there survives 
some memory of the ancient barrier. 

The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, 
votive shrines, tombs, historical stelae, and inscriptions. 
These last date from the Vlth to the XXIInd Dynasties. 
Some of the tombs and alcoves are very curious. Ranged 
side by side in a long row close above the river, and revealing 
glimpses of seated figures and gaudy decorations within, they 
look like private boxes with their occupants. In most of 
these we found mutilated triads of Gods,^ sculptured and 
painted; and in one larger than the rest were three niches, 
each containing tliree deities. 

The great Speos of Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the 
XVIIIth Dynast}", lies farthest north, and the memorial 
shrines of the Eameses family lie farthest south of the series. 
The first is a long gallery, like a cloister supported on four 
square columns ; and is excavated parallel with the river. 
The walls inside and out are covered with delicately executed 
sculptures in low relief, some of Avhich yet retain traces of 
colour. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest 
in the land of Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall 

1 See chap. xi. p. 197. 

2 " Le point de depart de la mythologie egyptienne est une Triade." 
Champollion, Lattrcs d'Ec/ypte, etc., XI« Lettre. Paris, 1868. These 
Ti-iads are best studied at Gerf Hossayn and Kalabsheh. 



SILSILIS AND EDFU. 



375 



described by Mariette^ as one of the few really lovely things 
in Egyptian art, have been too often engraved to need descrip- 
tion. The votive shrines of the Ranieses family are grouped 
all together in a picturesque nook green with bushes to the 
water's edge. There are three, the work of Seti I, Raraeses 
II, and Menepthah — lofty alcoves, each like a little prosce- 
nium, with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of 
Kings and Gods still bright 
with colour. In most of 
the votive sculptures of Sil- 
silis there figure two deities 
but rarely seen elsewhere ; 
namely Sebek, the Crocodile 
God, and Hapimu, the lotus- 
crowned God of the Nile. 
This last was the tutelary 
deity of the spot, and was 
"worshipped at Silsilis with 
special rites. Hymns in his 
honour are found carved ta-urt (silsilis). 
here and there upon the 
rocks. ^ Most curious of all, however, is a Goddess named 
Ta-ur-t,^ represented in one of the side subjects of the 
shrine of Kameses II. This charming person, who has 
the body of a hippopotamus and the face of a woman, 
wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five capes, and looks 
like a cross between a Lord Chancellor and a Coachman. 
Behind her stand Thoth and JSTut; all three receiving the 
homage of Queen Nefertari, who advances with an offering of 
two sistrums. As a hippopotamus crowned Avith the disk and 





TA-UR-T (PHIL.K). 



1 " L'un (parol du sud) represente une deesse nourissant de son lait 
divin le loi Horus, encore enfant. L'Egypte n'a jamais, comme la Grece, 
atteint I'ideal du beau . . . mais en tant qu'art Egyptien, le bas-relief du 
Spe'os de Gebel-Silsileli est une des plus belles ceuvres que Ton puisse voir. 
NuUe part, en effet, la ligne n'est plus pure, et il regne dansce tableau une 
certaine douceur tranquille qui cliarme et etonnea la fois." — Itineraire de 
la Ilaut Ei/ypte. A. Mariette: 1872, p. 24G. 

2 See Sallier Papyrus Nn. 2. Hymn to the Nile — translation by 
G. Maspero. 4to Paris, 18G8. 

3 Ta-nr-t., or Apet the Great. " Cette Deesse a corps d'hippopotame 
debout et a manielles pendantes, parait etre uns sorte de deesse nourrice. 
Elle ssmble, dans le bas temps, je ne dirai pas se substituer a Maut, mais 
completer le role de cette deesse. Elle est nominee la grande nourrice ; et 
presidait aux chambres ou etaient representees les naissances des jeunes 
divinites." — Diet. Arch. P. Pierret. Paris, 1875. 

" In the heavens, this Goddess personified the constellation Ursa 
Major, or the Great Bear." — Guide to the First and Second Egyptian 
Rooms. S. Birch. London, 1874. 



376 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

plumes, we had met with this Goddess before. She is not 
iiucommon as an amulet; and the Writer had already sketched 
her at Philae, where she occupies a prominent place in the 
fa9ade of the Mammisi. But the grotesque elegance of her 
attire at Silsilis is, I imagine, quite unique. 

The interest of the western bank centres in its sculptures 
and inscriptions ; the interest of the eastern bank, in its 
quarries. We rowed over to a point nearly opposite the 
shriues of the Ramessides, and, climbing a steep verge of 
debris, came to the mouth of a narrow cutting between walls 
of solid rock, from forty to fifty feet in height. These walls 
are smooth, clean-cut, and faultlessly perpendicular. The 
colour of the sandstone is rich amber. The passage is about 
ten feet in width and perhaps four hundred in length. Seen 
at a little after mid-day, with one side in shadow, the other 
in sunlight, and a narrow ribbon of blue sky overhead, it is 
like nothing else in the world; unless, perhaps, the entrance 
to Petra. 

Following this passage, we came presently to an immense 
area, at least as large as Belgrave Square ; beyond which, 
separated by a thin partition of rock, opened a second and 
somewhat smaller area. On the walls of these huge amphi- 
theatres, the chisel-marks and wedge-holes were as fresh as 
if the last blocks had been taken hence but yesterday ; yet 
it is some 2000 years since the place last rang to the blows 
of the mallet, and echoed back the voices of the workmen. 
From the days of the Theban Pharaohs to the days of the 
Ptolemies and Caesars, those echoes can never have been 
silent. The Temples of Karnak and Luxor, of Gournah, of 
Medinet Habu, of Esneh and Edfu and Hermonthis, all came 
from here, and from the quarries on the opposite side of the 
river.^ 

Returning, we climbed long hills of chips ; looked down 
into valleys of deh-is ; and came back at last to the river- 
side by way of an ancient inclined plane, along which the 
blocks were slid down to the transport boats below. But the 
most wonderful thing about Silsilis is the way in Avhich the 
quarrying has been done. In all these halls and passages 
and amphitheatres, the sandstone has been sliced out smooth 
and straight, like hay from a hayrick. Everywhere the 

1 For a highly interesting account of the rock-cut inscriptions, graflStl, 
and quarry-marks at Silsilis, in the desert between Assfian and Philae, and 
in the valley called Soba Rigolah, see Mr. W. M. F. Petrie's recent vol- 
ume entitlod A ,'^eason's Woi% in Egypt, 1877. 



SILSILIS AND EDFU. 'Sll 

blocks have been taken out square ; and everywhere the best 
of the stone has been extracted, and the worst left. Where 
it was fine in grain and even in colour, it has been cut with 
the nicest economy. Where it was whitish, or brownish, or 
traversed by veins of violet, it has been left standing. Here 
and there, we saw places where the lower part had been 
removed and the upper part left projecting, like the over- 
hanging stories of our old mediaeval timber houses. Com- 
pared with this puissant and perfect quarrying, our rough- 
and-ready blasting looks like tlie work of savages. 

Struggling hard against the wind, we left Silsilis that 
same afternoon. The wrecked steamer was now more than 
half under water. She had broken her back and begun fill- 
ing immediately, with all Cook's party on board. ])eing 
rowed ashore with what necessaries they could gather 
together, these unfortunates had been obliged to encamp in 
tents borrowed from the Mudir of the district. Luckily for 
them, a couple of homeward-bound dahabeeyahs came by 
next morning, and took off as many as they could accommo- 
date. The Duke's steam-tug received the rest. The tents 
were still there, and a gang of natives, under the superin- 
tendence of the Mudir, were busy getting off all that could 
be saved from the wreck. 

As evening drew on, our head-wind became a hurricane ; 
and that hurricane lasted, da}' and night, for thirty-six hours. 
All this time the N"ile was driving up against the current in 
great rollers, like rollers on the Cornish coast when tide and 
wind set together from the west. To hear them roaring past 
in the darkness of the night — to feel the Philae rocking, 
shivering, straining at her inooring-ropes, and bumping per- 
petually against the bank, was far from pleasant. By day, 
the scene was extraordinary. There were no clouds ; but 
the air was thick Avith sand, through which the sun glim- 
mered feebly. Some palms, looking gre}^ and ghost-like on 
the bank above, bent as if they must break before the blast. 
The Nile was yeasty, and flecked with brown foam, large 
lumps of which came swirling every now and then against 
our cabin windows. The opposite bank was simply nowhere. 
Judging only by what was visible from the deck, one would 
have vowed that the dahabeeyah was moored against an open 
coast, with an angry sea conjing in. 

The wind fell about five a.m. the second day ; when the 
men at once took to their oars, and by breakfast-time brought 
us to Edfu. Nothing now could be more delicious than tlie 



378 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

weather. It Avas a cool, silvery, misty morning — such a 
morning as one never knows in Nubia, where the sun is no 
sooner up than one is plunged at once into the full blaze and 
stress of day. There were donkeys Avaiting for us on the 
bank, and our way lay for about a mile through barley flats 
and cotton plantations. The country looked rich ; the peo- 
ple smiling and well-conditioned. We met a troop of them 
going down to the dahabeeyah with sheep, pigeons, poultry, 
and a young ox for sale. Crossing a back-water bridged by 
a few rickety palm-trunks, we now approached the village, 
which is perched, as usual, on the mounds of the ancient 
city. MeanAvhile the great pylons — seeming to grow larger 
every moment — rose, creamy in light, against a soft blue 
sky. 

Kiding through lanes of huts, Ave came presently to an 
open space and a long flight of roughly built steps in front 
of the Temple. At the top of these steps Ave Avere standing 
on the level of the modern village. At the bottom Ave saAV 
the massive pavement that marked the level of the ancient 
city. From that level rose the pylons Avhich even from afar 
off had looked so large. We now found that those stupen- 
dous towers not only soared to a height of about seventy-five 
feet above our heads, but plunged doAvn to a depth of at least 
forty more beneath our feet. 

Ten years ago, nothing Avas visible of the great Temple of 
Edfu save the tops of these pylons. The rest of the build- 
ing Avas as much lost to sight as if the earth had opened and 
swallowed it. Its courtyards Avere choked with foul debris. 
Its sculptured chambers were buried under forty feet of soil. 
Its terraced roof Avas a maze of closely packed huts, swarming 
Avith human beings, poultry, dogs, kine, asses, and vermin. 
Thanks to the indefatigable energy of Mariette, these Au- 
gsean stables Avere cleansed some thirty years ago. W"riting 
himself of this tremendous task, he says : — "I caused to be 
demolished the sixty-four houses Avhich encumbered the roof, 
as Avell as tAventy-eight more Avhich approached too near the 
outer Avail of the Temple. When the Avhole shall be isolated 
from its present surroundings by a massive Avail, the Avork 
of restoration at Edfu Avill be accomplished." ^ 

That Avail has not yet been built ; but the encroaching 
]nound has been cut clean away all round the building, now 
standing free in a deep open space, the sides of Avhich are in 

1 Letter of M. Mariette to V'e E. de Rouge: Revue Arche'ologique, vol. 
ii. p. 33, 1860. 



SILSILIS AND EDFU. 379 

some places as perpendicular as the quarried cliffs of Silsilis. 
lu the midst of this pit, lil^e a risen God issuing from the 
grave, the huge building stands before us in the sunshine, erect 
and perfect. The effect at first sight is overwhelming. 

Through the great doorway, fifty feet in height, we catch 
glimpses of a grand courtyard, and of a vista of doorways, 
one behind another. Going slowly down, we see farther into 
those dark and distant lialls at every step. At the same 
time the pylons, covered with gigantic sculptures, tower 
liigher and higher, and seem to shut out the sky. The cus- 
tode — a pigmy of six foot two, in semi-European dress — 
looks up grinning, expectant of bakhshish. For there is 
actually a cnstode here, and, which is more to the purpose, 
a good strong gate, through which neither pilfering visitors 
nor pilfering Arabs can pass unnoticed. 

Who enters that gate crosses the threshold of the past, and 
leaves two thousand years behind liim. In these vast courts 
and storied halls all is unchanged. Every pavement, every 
column, every stair, is in its place. The roof, but for a few 
roofing-stones missing just over the sanctuary, is not only 
uninjured, but in good repair. The hieroglyphic inscriptions 
are as sharp and legible as the day they were cut. If here 
and there a capital, or the face of a human-headed deity, has 
been mutilated, these are blemishes which at first one scarcely 
observes, and which in no wise mar the wonderful effect of 
the whole. We cross that great courtyard in the full blaze 
of the morning sunlight. In the colonnades on either side 
there is shade, and in the pillared portico beyond, a darkness 
as of night ; save where a patch of deep blue sky burns 
through a square opening in the roof, and is matched by a 
corresponding patch of blinding light on the pavement below. 
Hence we pass on through a hall of columns, two transverse 
corridors, a side chapel, a series of pitch-dark side chambers, 
and a sanctuary. Outside all these, surrounding the actual 
Temple on three sides, runs an external corridor open to 
the sky, and bounded by a superb wall forty feet in height. 
Wiien I have said that the entrance-front, with its twin 
pylons and central doorway, measures 250 feet in width by 
125 feet in height; that the first courtyard measures more 
tlian 160 feet in length by 140 in width ; that the entire 
length of the building is 450 feet, and that it covers an area 
of 80,000 square feet, I have stated facts of a kind which 
convey no more than a general idea of largeness to the ordi- 
nary reader. Of the harmony of the proportions, of the 



380 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

amazing size and strength of the individual parts, of the per- 
fect workmanship, of the fine grain and creamy amber of 
the stone, no description can do more tlian suggest an indefi- 
nite notion. 

Edfu and Denderali may almost be called twin Temples. 
They belong to the same period. They are built very nearly 
after the same plan.^ 'i'^iey are even allied in a religious 
sense ; for the myths of Horus ^ and Hathor ^ are interdepend- 
ent ; the one being the complement of the other. Thus in 
the inscriptions of Edfii we find perpetual allusion to the 
cultus of Denderah, and vice versa. Both Edfu and Den- 
derah are rich in inscriptions ; but as the extent of wall- 
space is greater at Edfu, so is the literary wealth of this 
Temple greater than the literary wealth of Denderah. It 
also seemed to me that the surface was more closely filled in 
at Edfu than at Denderah. Every Avall, every ceiling, every 
pillar, every architrave, every passage and side-chamber how- 
ever dark, every staircase, every doorway, the outer wall of 
the Temple, the inner side of the great wall of circuit, the 
huge pylons from top to bottom, are not only covered, but 
crowded, with figures and hieroglyphs. Among these we 
find no enormous battle-subjects as at Abou Simbel — no 
heroic recitals, like the poem of Pentaur. Tliose went out 
with the Pharaohs, and were succeeded by tableaux of reli- 
gious rites and dialogues of gods and kings. Such are the 
stock subjects of Ptolemaic edifices. They abound at Den- 
derah and Esneh, as well as at Edfu. But at Edfu there are 
more inscriptions of a miscellaneous character than in any 
Temple of Egypt; and it is precisely this secular informa- 
tion which is so priceless. Here are geographical lists of 
Nubian and Egyptian nomes, with their principal cities, 
their products, and their tutelary gods ; lists of tributary 
provinces and princes ; lists of temples, and of the lands 
pertaining thereunto ; lists of canals, of ports, of lakes ; 

1 Edfu is the elder Temple ; Denderah the copy. "Where the architect 
of Denderah has departed from his model, it has invariably been for the 
worse. 

'^ Horus : — " Dieu adore dans plusieurs nomes de la basse Egypte. Lo 
personnage d'Horus se rattaclie sousdes noms differents, a deux generations 
divines. Sous le nom de Haroeris il est ne de Seb et Nout, et i^ar conse- 
quent frere d'Osiris, dont il est le fils sous un autre nom. . . . Horus, 
arme d'un dard avec lequel il transperce les ennemis d'Osiris, est appele 
Horus le Justicier." — Diet. Arch. P. Pierret, article " Horus." 

^ Hathor : — " Elle est, comme Neith, Maut, et Nout, lapersonnification 
de I'espace dans lequel se meut le soleil, dont Horus symbolise le lever: 
aussi son nom, Hat-lior, signifie-t-il litteralement, I'habitation d'Horvs." — 
Ibid, article " Hathor." 



SILSILIS AND EDFU. 381 

kalendars of feasts and fasts ; astronomical tables ; gene- 
alogies and chronicles of the gods ; lists of the priests and 
priestesses of both Edfu and Denderah, with their names; 
lists also of singers and assistant functionaries ; lists of 
offerings, hymns, invocations ; and such a profusion of reli- 
gious legends as make of the walls of Edfu alone a complete 
text-book of Egyptian mythology.^ 

No great collection of these inscriptions, like the '' Den- 
derah" of Mariette, has yet been published; but every now 
and then some enterprisiug Egyptologist such as M. Naville 
or M. Jacques de Rouge, plunges for a while into the depths 
of the Edfu mine and brings back as much precious ore as he 
can carry. Some most singular and interesting details have 
thus been brought to light. One inscription, for instance, 
records exactly in what month, and on what day and at what 
hour, Isis gave birth to Horus. Another tells all about tlie 
sacred boats. We know now that Edfu possessed at least 
two ; and that on_e was called Hor-Hat, or the First Horus, 
and the other Aa-Mafek, or Great of Turquoise. These 
boats, it would appear, were not merely for carrying in pro- 
cession, but for actual use upon the water. Another text — 
one of the most curious — informs us that Hathor of Den- 
derah paid an annual visit to Horus (or Hor-Hat) of Edfu, 
and spent some days with him in his Temple. The whole 
ceremonial of this fantastic trip is given in detail. The 
Goddess travelled in her boat called Neb-Mer-t, or Lady 
of the Lake. Horus, like a polite host, weut out in his 
boat Hor-Hat, to meet her. The two deities with their 
attendants then formed one procession, and so came to Edfu, 
where the Goddess was entertained with a succession of 
festivals.^ 

One would like to know whether Horus duly returned all 
these visits ; and if the Gods, like modern Emperors, had a 
gay time among themselves. 

Other questions inevitably suggest themselves, sometimes 
painfully, sometimes ludicrously, as one paces chamber after 
chamber, corridor after corridor, sculptured all over with 
strange forms and stranger legends. What about these Gods 
whose genealogies are so intricate ; whose mutual relations 
are so complicated; who wedded and became parents; who 

1 Rapport sur vne Mission en Egi/pte. Vicomte E. de Rouof;. See 
R^vue Arch. Nouvelle S4rie, vol. x. p. 63. 

2 Textes G^ographiques dt( Temple d'Edfoii, by M. J. de Rouge. Revue 
Arch. vol. xii. p. 209. 



382 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

exchanged visits, and who even travelled ^ at times to distant 
countries ? What about those who served them in the Tem- 
ples ; who robed and unrobed them ; who celebrated their 
birthdays, and paraded them in stately processions, and con- 
sumed the lives of millions in erecting these mountains of 
masonry and sculpture to their honour ? We know now with 
what elaborate rites the Gods were adored ; wliat jewels 
they wore ; what hymns were sung in their praise. We 
know from what a subtle and philosophical core of solar 
myths their curious personal adventures were evolved. We 
may also be quite sure that the hidden meaning of these 
legends was almost wholly lost sight of in the later days of 
the religion,^ and that the Gods were accepted for what they 
seemed to be, and not for what they symbolised. What, 
then, of their worshippers ? Did they really believe all 
these things, or were any among them tormented with 
doubts of the Gods ? Were there sceptics in those days, 
who wondered how two hierogramniates could look each 
other in the face without laughing ? 

The custode told us that there were 242 steps to the top 
of each tower of the propylon. We counted 224, and dis- 
pensed willingly with the remainder. It was a long pull ; but 
had the steps been four times as many, the sight from the 
top would have been worth the climb. The chambers in the 
pylons are on a grand scale, with wide bevelled windows like 
the mouths of monster letter-boxes, placed at regular inter- 
vals all the way up. Through these windows the great flag- 
staffs and pennons were regulated from within. Tlie two 
pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. 
The parapet of this terrace and the parapets of the pylons 
above, are plentifully scrawled with names, many of which 
were left there by the French soldiers of 1799. 

The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortu- 
nately gone ; but the total height without them is 125 feet. 
From the top, as from the minaret of the great mosque at 
Damascus, one looks down into the heart of the town. Hun- 
dreds of mud-huts thatched with palm-leaves, hundreds of 
little courtyards, lie mapped out beneath one's feet ; and as 
the Fellah lives in his yard by day, using his hut merely as a 
sleeping place at night, one looks down, like the Diable 

1 See Professor Revillout's Seconde Memoire sur les Blemmyes, 1888, foi- 
an account of how the statues of Isis and other deities were taken once a 
year from the Temples of Philse for a trip into Ethiopia. 

2 See Appendix III, lieliijious Belief of the Ancient Egyptians. 



SILSILIS AND EDFIJ. 383 

Boiteux, upon the domestic doings of a roofless world. We 
see people moving to and fro, nnconscious of strange eyes 
watching them from above — men lounging, smoking, sleeping 
in shady corners — children playing — infants crawling on all 
fours — women cooking at clay ovens in the open air — cows 
and sheep feeding — pcndtry scratching and pecking — dogs 
basking in the sun. Tlie huts look more like the lairs of 
prairie-dogs than tlie dwellings of human beings. The little 
mosque with its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so 
far below, looks like a clay toy. Beyond the village, which 
reaches far and wide, lie barley fields, and cotton patches, 
and palm-groves, bounded on one side by the river, and on 
tlie other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with 
moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight 
through the cultivated land and out across the sandy plain 
beyond. We can trace its course for miles where it is only 
a trodden track in the desert. It goes, they tell us, direct to 
Cairo. On the opposite bank glares a hideous white sugar- 
factory, and, bowered in greenery, a country villa of the Khe- 
dive. The broad Nile flows between. The sweet Theban 
hills gleam through a pearly haze on the horizon. 

All at once, a fitful breeze springs up, blowing in little 
gusts and swirling the dust in circles round our feet. At 
the same moment, like a beautiful spectre, there rises from 
the desert close by an undulating semi-transparent stalk 
of yellow sand, which grows higher every moment, and 
begins moving northward across the plain. Almost at 
the same instant, another appears a long way off towards the 
south, and a third comes gliding mysteriously along the 
opposite bank. While we are watching the third, the first 
begins throwing off a wonderful kind of plume, wliich follows 
it, waving and melting in the air. And now the stranger 
from the south comes up at a smooth, tremendous pace, 
towering at least 500 feet above the desert, till, meeting 
some cross-current, it is snapped suddenly in twain. The 
lower half instantly collapses ; the upper, after hanging sus- 
pended for a moment, spreads and floats slowly, like a cloud. 
In the meanwhile, other and smaller columns form here and 
there — stalk a little way — waver — disperse — form again 
— and again drop away in dust. Then the breeze falls, and 
puts an abrupt end to this extraordinary spectacle. In less 
than two minutes there is not a sand-column left. As they 
came, they vanish — suddenly. 

Such is the landscape that frames the Temple ; and the 



384 OJSfE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

Temple, after all, is the sight that one comes up here to see, 
There it lies far below our feet, the courtyard with its 
almost perfect pavement ; the flat roof compact of gigantic 
monoliths ; the wall of circuit with its panoramic sculptures ; 
the portico, with its screen and pillars distinct in brilliant 
light against inner depths of dark ; each pillar a shaft of 
ivory, each square of dark a block of ebony. So perfect, so 
solid so splendid is the whole structure; so simple in unity 
of plan ; so complex in ornament ; so majestic in completeness, 
that one feels as if it solved the whole problem of religious 
architecture. 

Take it for what it is — a Ptolemaic structure preserved in 
all its integrity of strength and finish — it is certainly the 
finest extant Temple in Egypt. It brings before us, with 
even more completeness than Denderali, the purposes of its 
various parts, and the kind of ceremonial for which it was 
designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. 
Even the names of the different chambers are graven upon 
them in such wise than nothing^ would be easier than to re- 
construct the ground-plan of the whole building 'in hiero- 
glyphic nomenclature. That neither the Ptolemaic building 
nor the Ptolemaic mythus can be accepted as strictly rep- 
resentative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian 
thought, must of course be conceded. Both are modified by 
Greek influences, and have so far departed from the Phara- 
onic model. But then we have no equally perfect specimen 
of the Pharaonic model. The liamesseum is but a grand 
fragment. Karnak and Medinet Habu are aggregates of 
many Temples and many styles. Abydos is still half-buried. 
Amid so much that is fragmentary, amid so much that is 
ruined, the one absolutely perfect structure — Ptolemaic 
though it be — is of incalculable interest, and equally incal- 
culable value. 

While we are dreaming over these things, trying to fancy 
liow it all looked when the sacred flotilla came sweeping up 
the river yonder and the procession of Hor-Hat issued forth 
to meet the Goddess-guest — while we are half-expecting to 
see the whole brilliant concourse pour out, priests in their 
robes of panther-skin, priestesses with the tinkling sistrum, 
singers and harpists, and bearers of gifts and emblems, and 
high functionaries rearing aloft the sacred boat of the God — 

1 Not only the names of the chambers, but their dimensions in cubits 
and subdivisions of cubits are given. See Itin^raire de la Haute Egypte. 
A. Mariettk Bey. 1872, p. 241. 



SILSILIS AND ED Fir. 



385 



in this moment a turbaned Mueddin comes out upon the rick- 
ety Avooden gallery of the little minaret below, and intones 
the call to mid-day prayer. That plaintive cry has hardly 
died away before we see men here and there among the huts 
turning towards the east, and assuming the first postures 
of devotion. The women go on cooking aud nursing their 
babies. I have seen Moslem 
women at prayer in the 
mosques of Constantino 
pie, but never in Egypt. 

Meanwhile, some chil- 
dren catch sight of us, and, 
notwithstanding that we 
are one hundred and twenty- 
five feet above their heads, 
burst into a frantic chorus 
of " Bakhshish ! " 

And now, with a last long look at the Temple and the wide 
landsca.pe beyond, we come down again, and go to see a dis- 
mal little Mammesi three-parts buried among a wilderness of 
mounds close by. These mounds, which consist almost en- 
tirely of crude-brick debris with imbedded fragments of stone 
and pottery, are built up like coral-reefs, and represent the 
dwellings of some sixty generations. When they are cut 
straight through, as here round about the Great Temple, the 
substance of them looks like rich plum-cake. 




Till:; l-OVKI.Y AKAIJ MAIDEN. 



3^6 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



CHAPTER XXL 



We had so long been the sport of destiny, that we hardly 
knew what to make of oar good fortune when two days of 
sweet south wind carried us from Edfu to Luxor. We came 
back to find the old niooring-place alive with dahabeeyahs, 
and gay with English and American colours. These two 
flags well-nigh divide the river. In every twenty-five boats, 
one may fairly calculate upon an average of twelve Englisli, 
nine American, two German, one Belgian, and one Frencli. 
Of all these, our American cousins, ever helpful, ever cordial, 
are pleasantest to meet. Their flag stands to me for a host 
of brave and generous and kindly associations. It brings 
back memories of many lands and many faces. It calls up 
echoes of friendly voices, some far distant ; some, alas ! silent. 
Wherefore — be it on the Nile, or the Thames, or the high 
seas, or among Syrian camping-grounds, or drooping listlessly 
from the balconies of gloomy diplomatic haunts in continen- 
tal cities — my heartwarms to the stars and stripes whenever 
I see them. 

Our arrival brought all the dealers of Luxor to the surface. 
They waylaid and followed us wherever we went; while some 
of the better sort — grave men in long black robes and ample 
turbans — installed themselves on our lower deck, and lived 
there for a fortnight. Go upstairs when one would, whether 
before breakfast in the morning, or after dinner in the even- 
ing, there we always found them, patient, imperturbable, 
ready to rise up, and salaam, and produce from some hidden 
pocket a purseful of scarabs or a bundle of funerary statu- 
ettes. Some of these gentlemen were Arabs, some Copts — 
all polite, plausible, and mendacious. 

Where Copt and Arab drive the same doubtful trade, it is 
not easy to define the shades of difference in their dealings. 
As workmen, the Copts are perhaps the more artistic. As 
salesmen, the Arabs are perhaps the less dishonest. Both 
sell more forgeries than genuine antiquities. Be the demand 



THEBES. 387 

what it may, they are prepared to meet it. Thothmes is not 
too heavy, nor Cleopatra too light, for them. Their carvings 
in old sycamore wood, their porcelain statuettes, their hiero- 
glyphed limestone tablets, are executed with a skill that al- 
most defies detection. As for genuine scarabs of the highest 
antiquity, they are turned out by the gross every season. 
Engraved, glazed, and administered to the turkej^s iu the 
fonu of boluses, they acquire by the simple process of diges- 
tion a degree of venerableness that is really charming. 

Side by side with the work of production goes on the work 
of excavation. The professed diggers colonise the western 
bank. They live rent-free among the tombs ; drive donkeys 
or work shadufs by day, and spend their nights searching 
for treasure. Some hundreds of families live in this grim 
v/ay, spoiling the dead-and-gone Egyptians for a livelihood. 

Eorgers, diggers, and dealers play, meanwhile, into one 
another's hands, and drive a roaring trade. Your dahabeeyah, 
as I have just shown, is beset from the moment you moor 
till the moment you pole off again from shore. The boy 
who drives your donkey, the guide who pilots you among 
the tombs, the half-naked Fellah who flings down his hoe as 
you pass, and runs beside you for a mile across the plain, 
have one and all an " anteekah " to dispose of. The turbaned 
official who comes, attended by his secretary and pipe-bearer, 
to pay you a visit of ceremony, warns you against imposition, 
and hints at genuine treasures to which he alone possesses 
the key. The gentlemanly native who sits next to you at 
dinner has a wonderful scarab in his pocket. In short, every 
man, woman, and child about the place is bent on selling a 
bargain ; and the bargain, in ninety-nine cases out of a 
hirndred, is valuable in so far as it represents the industry 
of Luxor — but no farther. A good thing, of course, is to be 
had occasionally ; but the good thing never comes to the 
surface as long as a market can be found for tlie bad one. 
It is only when the dealer flnds he has to do with an experi- 
enced customer, that he produces the best he has. 

Flourishing as it is, the trade of Luxor labors, however, 
under some uncomfortable restrictions. Private excavation 
being prohibited, the digger lives in dread of being found 
out by the Governor. The forger, who has notliing to fear 
from the Governor, lives in dread of being found out by the 
tourist. As for the dealer, whether he sells an antique or 
an imitation, he is equally liable to punishment. In the 
one case he commits an offence against the state; and in the 



388 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

other, lie obtains money under false pretences. Meanwhile, 
the Governor deals out such even-handed justice as he can, 
and does his best to enforce the law on both sides of the 
river. 

By a curious accident, L. and the Writer once actually 
penetrated into a forger's workshop. Not knowing that it 
had been abolished, we went to a certain house in which a 
certain Consulate had once upon a time been located, and 
there knocked for admission. An old deaf Feliaha opened 
the door, and after some hesitation showed us into a large 
unfurnished room with three windows. In each window 
there stood a workman's bench strewn with scarabs, amulets, 
and funerary statuettes in every stage of progress. We ex- 
amined these specimens with no little curiosity. Some were 
of wood ; some were of limestone ; some were partly coloured. 
The colours and brushes were there ; to say nothing of files, 
gravers, and little pointed tools like gimlets. A magnifying 
glass of the kind used by engravers lay in one of the window- 
recesses. We also observed a small grindstone screwed to 
one of the benches and worked by a treadle ; while a mas- 
sive fragment of mummy-case in a corner behind the door 
showed whence came the old sycamore wood for the wooden 
specimens. That three skilled workmen furnished with 
European tools had been busy in this room shortly before we 
were shown into it, was perfectly clear. We concluded that 
they had just gone away to breakfast. 

Meanwhile we waited, expecting to be ushered into the 
presence of the Consul. In about ten minutes, however, 
breathless with hurrying, arrived a well-dressed Arab whom 
we had never seen before. Distracted between his Oriental 
politeness and his desire to get rid of us, he bowed us out 
precipitately, explaining that the house had changed owners 
and that the Power in question had ceased to be represented 
at Luxor. We heard him rating the old woman savagely, as 
soon as the door had closed behind us. T met that well- 
dressed Arab a day or two after, near the Governor's house ; 
and he immediately vanished round the nearest corner. 

The Boulak authorities keep a small gang of trained 
excavators always at work in the Necropolis of Thebes. 
These men are superintended by the Governor, and every 
mummy-case discovered is forwarded to Boulak unopened. 
Thanks to the courtesy of the Governor, we had the good 
fortune to be present one morning at the opening of a tomb. 
He sent to summon us, just as we were going to breakfast. 



THEBES. 



389 




390 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

With what alacrity Ave manned the felucca, and how we ate 
our bread and butter half in the boat and half on donkey- 
back, may easily be imagined. How well I remember that 
early morning ride across the western plain of Thebes — the 
young barley rippling for miles in the sun ; the little Avater- 
channel running beside the path;" the Avhite butterflies cir- 
cling in couples ; the Avayside grave Avith its tiny dome and 
prayer-mat, its Avell and broken kulleh, inviting the passer-by 
to drink and pray ; the Avild vine that trailed along the Avail ; 
the vivid violet of the vetches that blossomed unbidden in 
the barley. We had the mounds and p3^1ons of Medinet Habu 
to the left — the ruins of the Ramesseum to the right — the 
Colossi of the Plain and the rosy Avestern mountains before 
us all the Avay. How the great statues glistened in the 
morning light ! How they towered up against the soft blue 
sky ! Battered and featureless, they sat in the old patient 
attitude, looking as if they mourned the vanished springs. 

We found the new tomb a few hundred yards in the rear 
of the Eamesseum. The diggers Avere in the pit ; the Gover- 
nor and a feAv Arabs Avere looking on. The vault Avas lined 
Avith brickwork above, and cut square in the living rock 
below. We Avere just in time ; for already, through the sand 
and rubble with which the grave had been filled in, there 
appeared an outline of something buried. The men, throw- 
ing spades and picks aside, noAv began scraping up the dust 
Avith their hands, and a mummy-case came gradually to light. 
It Avas shaped to represent a body lying at length Avith the 
hands crossed upon the breast. Both hands and face Avere 
carved in high relief. The ground-colour of the sarcophagus 
Avas white ; ' the surface covered Avith hieroglyphed legends 
and somcAvhat coarsely painted figures of the four lesser 
Gods of the Dead. The face, like the hands, was coloured a 
broAvnish yellow and highly varnished. But for a little 
dimness of the gaudy hues, and a little flaking off of the 
surface here and there, the thing Avas as perfect as when it 
was placed in the ground. A small Avooden box roughly put 
together lay at the feet of the mummy. This Avas taken out 

1 This was, no doubt, an interment of the period of the XXIIIrd or 
XXIVth Dynasty, the style of which is thus described by Mariette: 
" Succedent les caisses a fond blanc. Autour decelles-(;i court une legende 
en hieroglyphes de toutes couleurs. Le devant du couvercle est divise 
horizontalement en tableaux oil alternent les representations et les textes 
trace's en hieroglyphes verdatres. La momie elle-meme est hermetiquement 
enfermee dans un cartonnage cousu par derriere et peint de couleurs tran- 
chantes." — Notice des Monuments a lioxilak, p. 46. Paris, 1872. 



THEBES. 391 

first, and handed to the Governor, Avho put it aside without 
opening it. The mummy-case was then raised upright, hoisted 
to the brink of the pit, and laid upon the ground. 

It gave one a kind of shock to see it first of all lying just 
as it had been left by the mourners ; then hauled out by rude 
liands, to be searched, unrolled, perhaps broken up as un- 
worthy to occupy a corner in the Boulak collection. Once 
they are lodged and catalogued in a museum, one comes to 
look upon these things as " specimens," and forgets that they 
once were living beings like ourselves. But this poor mummy 
looked startlingiy human and pathetic lying at the bottom of 
its grave in the morning sunlight. 

After the sarcophagus had been lifted out, a small blue por- 
celain cup, a ball of the same material, and another little ob- 
ject shaped like a cherry, were found in the debris. The last 
was hollow, and contained something that rattled when 
shaken. The mummy, the wooden box, and these porcelain 
toys, were then removed to a stable close by ; and the exca- 
vators, having laid bare what looked like the mouth of a 
bricked-up tunnel in the side of the tomb, fell to work again 
immediately. A second vault — perhaps a chain of vaults — 
it was thought would now be discovered. 

We went away, meanwhile, for a few hours, and saw some 
of the famous painted tombs in that part of the mountain- 
side just above, which goes by the name of Sheykh Abd-el- 
Koorueh. 

It was a hot climb ; the sun blazing over-head ; the cliffs 
reflecting light and heat ; the white debris glaring under-foot. 
Some of the tombs up here are excavated in terraces, and look 
from a distance like rows of pigeon holes ; others are pierced 
in solitary ledges of rock ; many are difficult of access ; all 
are intolerably hot and oppressive. They wei'e numbered 
lialf a century ago by the late Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and 
the numbers are there still. We went that morning into 14. 
16, 17, and 35. 

As a child " The Manners and Customs of the Ancient 
Egyptians " had shared my affections with *■' The Arabian 
JVii/hts." I had read every line of the old six-volume edition 
over and over again. I knew every one of the six hundred 
illustrations by heart. Now I suddenly found myself in the 
midst of old and half-forgotten friends. Every subject on 
these Avonderful walls was already familiar to me. Only tlie 
framework, only the colouring, only the sand under-foot, only 
the mountain slope outside, were new and strange. It seemed 



392 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

to me that I had met all these kindly brown people years 
and years ago — perhaps in some previous stage of existence; 
that I had walked with them in their gardens ; listened at 
the music of their lutes and tambourines ; jjledged them at 
their feasts. Here is the funeral procession that I know so 
well ; and the trial scene after death, where the mummy 
stands upright in the presence of Osiris, and sees his heart 
weighed in the balance. Here is that well-remembered old 
fowler crouching in the rushes with his basket of decoys. 
One withered hand is lifted to his mouth; his lips frame the 
call ; his thin hair blows in the breeze. I see now that he 
has placed himself to the leeward of the game ; but that sub- 
tlety escaped me in the reading days of my youth. Yonder 
I recognise a sculptor's studio into which I frequently peeped 
at that time. His men are at work as actively as ever; but 
I marvel that they have not yet finished polishing the sur- 
face of that red-granite colossus. This patient angler, still 
waiting for a bite, is another old acquaintance ; and yonder, 
I declare, is that evening party at which I was so often an 
imaginary guest ! Is the feast not yet over ? Has that late 
comer whom we saw hurrying along just now in a neighbour- 
ing corridor not yet arrived ? AVill tlie musicians never 
play to the end of their concerto ? Are those ladies still so 
deeply interested in the patterns of one another's ear-rings ? 
It seems to me that the world has been standing still in here 
for these last five-and-thirty years. 

Did I say five-and-thirty ? Ah me ! I think we must 
multiply it by ten, and then by ten again, ere we come to the 
right figure. These people lived in the time of the Thothmes 
and the Amenhoteps — a time upon which Rameses the Great 
looked back as we look back to the days of the Tudors and 
the Stuarts. 

From the tombs above, Ave went back to the excavations 
below. The bricked-up opening had led, as the diggers ex- 
pected, into a second vault; and another mummy-case, half- 
crushed by a fall of debris, had just been taken out. A third 
was found later in the afternoon. Curiously enough, they 
were all three mummies of women. 

The Governor was taking his luncheon with the first 
mummy in the recesses of the stable, which had been a fine 
tomb once, but reeked now with manure. He sat on a rug, 
cross-legged, with a bowl of sour milk before him and a tray 
of most uninviting little cakes. He invited me to a seat on 
his rug, handed me his own spoon, and did the honours of 
the stable as pleasantly as if it had been a palace. 



THEBES. 393 

I asked him why the excavators, instead of working among 
these second-class graves, were not set to search for the tombs 
of the Kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty, supposed to be wait- 
ing discovery in a certain valley called the Valley of the 
West. He shook his head. The way to the Vallej^ of the 
West, he said, was long and difficult. Men working there 
must encamp upon the spot 5 and merely to supply them with 
water would be no easy matter. He was allowed, in fact, 
only a sum sufficient for the wages of fifty excavators ; and 
to attack the Valley of the West with less than two hundred 
would be useless. 

We had luncheon that morning, I remember, with the M. 
B.'s in the second hall of the Ramesseum. It was but one 
occasion among many ; for the Writer was constantly at work 
on that side of the river, and we had luncheon in one or other 
of the western Temples every day. Yet that particular meet- 
ing stands out in my memory apart from the rest. I see the 
joyous party gathered together in the shade of the great 
columns — ihe Persian rugs spread on the uneven ground — 
the dragoman in his picturesque dress going to and fro 
— the brown and tattered Arabs, squatting a little way off, 
silent and hungry-eyed, each with his string of forged scarabs, 
his imitation gods, or his bits of mummy-case and painted 
cartonnage for sale — the glowing peeps of landscape framed 
in here and there through vistas of columns — the emblazoned 
architraves laid along from capital to capital overhead, each 
block sculptured with enormous cartouches yet brilliant with 
vermilion and ultramarine — the patient donkeys munching 
all together at a little heap of vetches in one corner — the 
intense depths of cloudless blue above. Of all Theban ruins, 
the Ramesseuni is the most cheerful. Drenched in sunshine, 
the warm limestone of which it is built seems to have mel- 
lowed and turned golden with time. No walls enclose it. 
No towering pylons overshadow it. It stands high, and the 
air circulates freely among those simple and beautiful col- 
umns. There are not many Egyptian ruins in which one 
can talk and be merry ; but in the Ramesseum one may 
thoroughly enjoy the passing hour. 

Whether Rameses the Great was ever actually buried in 
this place is a problem which future discoveries may possibly 
solve ; but that the Ramesseum and the tomb of Osymandias 
were one and the same building is a point upon which I 
never entertained a moment's doubt. Spending day after 
day among these ruins ; sketching now here, now there ; 



394 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

going over the ground bit by bit, and comparing every detail, 
I came at last to wonder how an identity so obvious could 
ever have been doubted. Diodorus was of course inaccurate ; 
but then one as little looks for accuracy in Diodorus as in 
Homer. Compared with some of his topographical descrip- 
tions, the account he gives of the Ramesseum is a marvel of 
exactness. He describes ^ a building approached by two 
vast courtyards ; a hall of pillars opening by way of three 
entrances from the second courtyard ; a succession of cham- 
bers, including a sacred library ; ceilings of azure " be- 
spangled with stars ; " walls covered with sculptures repre- 
senting the deeds and triumphs of the king whom he calls 
Osymandias,^ amongst which are particularly noticed the 
assav\lt of a fortress "environed by a river," a procession of 
captives without hands, and a series of all the Gods of Egypt, 
to whom the king was represented in the act of making 
offerings ; finally, against the entrance to the second court- 
yard, three statues of the King, one of which, being of 
syenite granite and made " in a sitting posture," is stated to 
be not only " the greatest in all Egypt," but admirable above 
all others " for its workmanship, and the excellence of the 
stone." 

Bearing in mind that what is left of the Eamesseum is, as 
it were, only the backbone of the entire structure, one can 
still walk from end to end of the building, and still recognise 
every feature of this description. We turn our backs on the 
wrecked towers of the first propylon ; crossing what was 
once the first courtyard, we leave to the left the fallen 
colossus ; we enter the second courtyard, and see before us 
the three entrances to the hall of pillars, and the remains of 
two other statues ; we walk up the central avenue of the 
great hall, and see above our heads architraves studded with 
yellow stars upon a ground colour so luminously blue that it 
almost matches the sky; thence, passing through a chamber 
lined with sculptures, we come to the library, upon the door- 
jambs of which Champollion found the figures of Thoth and 
Saf, the Lord of Letters and the Lady of the Sacred Books; ^ 

1 Diodoi-us, Bihlioth. Hist., Bk. i. chap. iv. The fault of inaccuracy 
ought, however, to be charged to HecatiBus, who was the authority fol- 
lowed here by Diodorus. 

'^ Possibly the Smendes of Manetho, and the Ba-en-Ded whose cartouche 
is found by Brugsch on a sarcophagus in the museum at Vienna; see 
Hist. d'Effypte, chap. x. p. 213, ed. 1859. Another claimant to this identi- 
fication is found in a King named Se-Mentu, whose cartouches were found 
by Mariette on some small gold tablets at Tanis. 

5 Letter XIV. p. 235, Letters d'Egypte; Paris, 1868. See also chap 
xviii. of the present work ; p. 331. 



THEBES. 



395 




396 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

finally, among such fragments of sculptured, decoration as 
yet remain, we find the King making offerings to a Mero- 
glyphed. list of Gods as well as to his deified ancestors ; we 
see the train of captives, and the piles of severed hands ; ' 
and we discover an immense battle-piece, which is in fact 
a replica of the famous battle-piece at Abou Sirabel. This 
subject, like its Nubian prototype, yet preserves some of its 
colour. The enemy are shown to be fair-skinned and light- 
haired, and wear the same Syrian robes ; and the river, more 
green than that at Abou Simbel, is painted, in zigzags in the 
same manner. The King, alone in his chariot, sends arrow 
after arrow against the flying foe. They leap into the river, 
and swim for their lives. Some are drowned ; some cross in 
safety, and are helped out by their friends on the opposite 
bank. A red-haired chief, thus rescued, is suspended head- 
downwards by his soldiers, in order to let the water that he 
has swallowed run out of his mouth. The river is once more 
the Orontes ; the city is once more Kadesh ; the king is 
once more Rameses II ; and the incidents are again the 
incidents of the poem of Pentaur. 

The one wholly unmistakable point in the narrative is, 
however, the colossal statue of syenite, " the largest in 
Egypt." ^ The siege and the river, the troops of captives 
are to be found elsewhere ; but nowhere, save here, a colossus 
which answers to that description. This statue was larger 
than even the twin Colossi of the Plain. Tliey measure 
eighteen feet and three inches across the shoulders ; this 
measures twenty-two feet and four inches. They sit about 

1 See Champollion, Letter XIV, footnote, p. 418. 

2 The sitting colossus of the Ramesseum was certainly the largest pei'- 
fect statue in Egypt when Diodorus visited the Valley of the Nile, for the 
great standing colossus of Tanis had long before his time been cut up by 
Sheshonk III for building pui'poses; but that the Tanite colossus much 
exceeded the colossus of the Ramesseum in height and bulk is placed be- 
yond doubt by the scale of the fragments discovered by Mr. Petrie in the 
course of his excavations in 1884. According to his very cautious calcula- 
tions, the figure alone of the Tanite colossus was 900 inches, or 75 feet 
high ; or somewhere between 70 and 80 feet. " To this," says Mr. Petrie, 
" we must add the height of the crown, which would proportionately be 
some 14/^ feet. To this again must be added the base of the figure, which 
was thinner than the usual scale, being only 27 inches thick. Thus the 
whole block appears to have been about 1100 inches, or say 92 feet high. 
This was, so far as is known, the largest statue ever executed." The 
weight of the figure is calculated by Mr. Petrie at about 900 tons ; i.e. 100 
tons more than the colossus of the Ramesseum. That it stood upon a 
suitable pedestal cannot be doubted; and with the pedestal, which can 
scarcely have been less than 18 or 20 feet in height, the statue must have 
towered some 120 feet above the level of the plain. See Tanis, part i. 
chap. ii. pp. 22, 23. [Note to Second Edition.] 



THEBES. 397 

fifty feet high, without their pedestals ; this one must have 
lifted liis liead some ten feet liigher stilh " The measure of 
his foot,'' says Diodorus, " exceeded seven cubits; " the Greek 
cubit being a little over eighteen inches in length. The foot 
of the fallen Rameses measures nearly eleven feet in length 
by four feet ten inches in breadth. This, also, is the only 
very large Theban colossus sculptured in the red syenite of 
Assiian.^ 

Ruined almost beyond recognition as it is, one never 
doubts for a moment that this statue was one of the wonders 
of Egyptian workmanship. It most probably repeated in 
every detail the colossi of Abou Simbel ; but it surpassed 
them as much in finish of carving as in perfection of mate- 
rial. The stone is even more beautiful in colour than that 
of the famous obelisks of Karnak ; and is so close and hard 
in grain, that the scarab-cutters of Luxor are said to use 
splinters of it as our engravers use diamonds, for the points 
of their graving tools. The solid contents of the whole, 
when entire, are calculated at 887 tons. How this astound- 
ing mass was transported from Assuan, how it was raised, 
how it was overthrown, are problems upon which a great deal 
of ingenious conjecture has been wasted. One traveller 
affirms that the wedge-marks of the destroyer are distinctly 
visible. Another, having carefully examined the fractured 
edges, declares that the keenest eye can detect neither 
wedge-marks nor any other evidences of violence. We 
looked for none of these signs and tokens. We never asked 
ourselves liow or when the ruin had been done. It was 
enough that the mighty had fallen. 

Inasmuch as one can clamber upon and measure these stu- 
pendous fragments, the fallen colossus is more astonishing, 
})erhaps, as a wreck than it would have been as a whole. 
Here, snapped across at the waist and flung helplessly back, 
lie a huge head and shoulders, to climb which is like climb- 
ing a rock. Yonder, amid piles of unintelligible debris, we 
see a great foot, and nearer the head, part of an enormous 
trunk, together with the upper halves of two huge thighs 
clothed in the usual shenti or striped tunic. The klaft or 
headdress is also striped, and these stripes, in both instances, 
retain the delicate yellow colour with which they were origi- 
nally filled in. To judge from the way in which this colour 

1 The syenite colossus of which the British Museum possesses the 
head, and which is popularly known as the Young Memnon, measured 
twenty-four feet in height before it was broken up by the French. 



398 OXE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

was applied, one would say that the statue was tinted rather 
than painted. The surface-work, wherever it remains, is as 
smooth and highly finished as the cutting of the finest gem. 
Even the ground of the superb cartouche, on the upper half 
of the arm, is elaborately polished. Finally, in the pit 
which it ploughed out in falling, lies the great pedestal, 
hieroglyphed with the usual pompous titles of Rameses Mer- 
Amen. Diodorus, knowing nothing of Rameses or his style, 
interprets the inscription after his own fanciful fashion ; — 
" I am Osymandias, King of Kings. If any would know how 
great I am, and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my 
works." 

The fragments of wall and shattered pylon that yet remain 
standing at the Ramesseum face K.W. and S. W. Hence it 
follows that some of the most interesting of the surface 
sculpture (being cut in very low relief) is so placed with re- 
gard to the light as to be actually invisible after midday. 
It was not till the occasion of my last visit, when I came 
early in the morning to make a certain sketch by a certain 
light, that I succeeded in distinguishing a single figure of 
that celebrated tableau,^ on the south wall of the Great Hall, 
in which the Egyptians are seen to be making use of the 
testudo and scaling ladder to assault a Syrian fortress. The 
wall sculptures of the second hall are on a bolder scale, and 
can be seen at any hour. Here Thoth writes the name of 
Rameses on the egg-shaped fruit of the persea tree, and pro- 
cessions of shaven priests carry on their shoulders the sa- 
cred boats of various Gods. In the centre of each boat is a 
shrine supported by winged genii, or cherubim. The veils 
over these shrines, the rings through which the bearing-poles 
were passed, and all the appointments and ornaments of the 
bari, are distinctly shown. One seems here, indeed, to be 
admitted to a glimpse of those original shrines upon which 
Moses — learned in the sacred lore of the Egyptians — ■ 
modelled, with but little alteration, his Ark of the Covenant. 

Next in importance to Karnak, and second in interest to 
none of the Theban ruins, is the vast group of buildings 
known by the collective name of Medinet Habu. To attempt 
to describe these would be to undertake a task as hopeless as 
the description of Karnak. Such an attempt lies, at all 
events, beyond the compass of these pages, so many of which 
have already been given to similar subjects. For it is of 

1 See woodcut No. 340 in Sir G. "Wilkinson's Manners and C'ust07ns of 
the Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. ed. 1871. 



THEBES. 399 

Temples as of mountains — no two are alike, yet all sound so 
much alike when described that it is scarcely possible to 
write about them without becoming monotonous. In the 
present instance, therefore, I will note only a few points of 
special interest, referring those who wish for fuller partic- 
ulars to the elaborate account of Medinet Habu in Murray's 
Handbook of Egypt. 

In the second name of Medinet Habu — Medinet being the 
common Arabic for city, and Habu, Aboo, or Taboo being 
variously spelled — there survives almost beyond doubt the 
ancient name of that famous city which the Greeks called 
Thebes. It is a name for which many derivations^ have 
been suggested, but upon which the learned are not yet 
agreed. 

The ruins of Medinet Habu consist of a smaller Temple 
founded by Queen Hatohepsu of the XVIIIth Dynasty, a 
large and magnificent Temple entirely built by Rameses III 
of the XXth Dynasty, and an extremely curious and interest- 
ing building, part palace, part fortress, which is popularly 
known as the Pavilion. 

The walls of this pavilion, the walls of the great forecourt 
leading to the smaller Temple, and a corner of the original 
wall of circuit, are crowned in the Egyptian style with 
shield-shaped battlements, precisely as the Khetan and 
Amorite fortresses are battlemented in the sculptured tab- 
leaux at Abou Simbel and elsewhere. From whichever side 
one approaches Medinet Habu, these stone shields strike the 
eye as a new and interesting feature. They are, moreover, 
so far as I know, the only specimens of Egyptian battle- 
menting which have survived destruction. Those of the 
wall of circuit are of the time of Rameses V ; those of the 
pavilion, of the time of Rameses III; and the latest, which 
are those of the forecourt^ are of the period of Roman occu- 
pation. 

As biographical material, the Temple and Pavilion ar, 
Medinet Habu and the great Harris papyrus,^ are to the life 

1 Among these are Ahot or abode ; meaning the abode of Amen ; Ta- 
Vaboo, the mound; Ta-Api, the head or capital, etc. etc. See Recherc/ws 
svr le nom Egypticn de Thebes. Chabas: 1863; Textes Ge'offraphiques 
d'Edfoo, J. DE Rouge: Revue Arch. Novvelle Se7ie, vol. xii.1865; etc. etc. 

2 The Great Harris Papyrus is described by Dr. Birch as "one of the 
finest, best written, and best preserved, that have been discovered in 
Egypt. It measures 133 feet long by 161 inches broad, and vs^as found 
with several others in a tomb behind Medinet Habu. Purchased soon 
after by the late A. C. Harris of Alexandria, it was subsequently unrolled 
and divided into seventy-nine leaves, and laid down on card-board. With 



400 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

of Rameses III precisely what Abou Simbel, the Ramesseum, 
and the poem of Pentaur, are to the life of Rameses II. 
Great wars, great victories, magnihcent praises of the prow- 
ess of the King, pompous lists of enemies slain and. cap- 
tured, inventories of booty and of precious gifts offered by 
the victor to the Gods of Egypt, in both instances cover the 
sculptured walls and fill the written pages. A comparison 
of the two masses of evidence — due allowance being made 
both ways for Oriental fervour of diction — shows that in 
Eameses III we have to do with a king as brilliant, as valor- 
ous, and as successful as Rameses II.-* 

It may be that before the time of this Pharaoh certain 
Temples were used also as royal residences. It is possi- 
ble to believe this of Temples such as Gournah and Abydos, 

the exception of some small portions which are wanting in the first leaf, 
the text is complete throughout." The papynis purports to be a post- 
mortem address of the King, Rameses III, recounting the benefits he had 
conferred upon Egypt by his administration, and by his delivery of the 
country from foreign subjection. It also records the immense gifts which 
he had conferred on the Temples of Egypt, of Amen at Thebes, Tum at 
Heliopolis, and Ptah at Memphis, etc. " The last part is addressed to the 
officers of the army, consisting partly of Sardinian and Libyan mercenaries, 
and to the people of Egypt, in the thirty-second year of his reign, and is a 
kind of posthumous panegyrical discourse, or political will, like that of 
Augustus discovered at Ancyra. The papyrus itself consists of the follow- 
ing divisions, three of which are preceded by large coloured plates or 
vignettes: — Introduction: donations to the Theban deities ; donations to 
the gods of Heliopolis; donations to the gods of Memphis; donations to the 
gods of the north and south ; summary ot donations ; historical speech and 
conclusion. Throughout the monarch speaks in the first person, the list 
excepted." Introduction to Annals of liameses III ; S. Birch: Records of 
the Fast, vol. vi. p. 21 ; 1876. 

1 " Rameses III was one of the most remarkable monarchs in the annals 
of Egypt. A period of political confusion and foreign conquest of the 
country preceded his advent to the throne. His father, Setnecht, had 
indeed succeeded in driving out the foreign invaders, and re-establishing 
tlie native dynasty of the Theban kings, the twentieth of the list of 
Manetho. But Rameses had a great task before him, called to the throne 
at a youthful age. . . . The first task of Rameses Avas to restore the civil 
goverinnent and military discipline. In his fifth year, he defeated the 
Maxyes and Libyans with great slaughter when they invaded Egypt, led 
by five chiefs; and in the same year he had also to repulse the Satu, or 
eastern foreigners, who had attacked Egypt. The maritime nations of the 
west, it appears, had invaded Palestine and the Syrian coast in his eighth 
year, and after taking Carchemish, a confederation of the Pidusata, 
supposed by some to be the Pelasgi, Tekkaru or Teucri, Sakalvsa or Siculi, 
Tanau or Daunians, if not Danai, and Uasasa or Osci, marched to the con- 
quest of Egypt. It is possible that they reached the mouth of the eastern 
branch of the Nile. But Rameses concentrated an army at Taha, in 
Northern Palestine, and marched back to defend the Nile. Assisted by his 
mercenary forces, he inflicted a severe defeat on the confederated west, and 
returned with his prisoners to Thebes. In his eleventh year the Mashuasha 
or Maxyes, assisted by the Tahennu or Libyans, again invaded Egypt, to 
suffer a fresh defeat, and the country seems from this period to have 



THEBES. 



401 



the plan of which includes, besides the usual halls, side- 
chambers, and sanctuary, a number of other apartments, the 
uses of which are unknown. It may also be that former 




\ ■'^ ' — — i. 



^^-'—n - 'j! 






PALACE ENTRANCE — >ri':r)INKT HA15U. 

kings dwelt in houses of brick and carved woodwork, such as 
we see represented in the wall-paintings of various tombs. 

It is at all events a fact that the only building which we 
can assume to have been a royal palace, and of which any 

remained in a state of tranquillity. . . . The vast Temple at Medinet Habu, 
his palaces and treasury, still remain to attest his magnificence and 
grandeur ; and if his domestic life was that of an ordinary Egyptian mon- 
arch, he was as distinguished in the battlefield as the palace. Treason, no 
doubt, disturbed his latter days, and it is not known how he died ; but he 
expired after a reign of thirty-one years and some months, and left the 
throne to his son, it is supposed, about b.c. 1200." See Remarks vpon the 
Cover of the Granite Sarcophac/iis of Barneses III : S. Birch, LL.D., 
Cambridge, 1876. 



402 ONJE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

vestiges have come down to the present day, was erected by 
Rameses III, namely, this little pavilion at Medinet Habu. 

It may not have been a palace. It may have been only a 
fortitied gate ; but though the chambers are small, they are 
well lighted, and the plan of tlie whole is certainly do- 
mestic in character. It consists, as we now see it, of two 
lodges connected by zigzag wings with a central tower. The 
lodges and tower stand to each other as the three points of 
an acute angle. These structures enclose an oblong court- 
yard leading by a passage under the central tower to the 
sacred enclosure beyond. So far as its present condition en- 
ables us to judge, this building contained only eight rooms; 
namely three, one above the other, in each of the lodges, 
and two over the gateway.-^ These three towers communi- 
cate by means of devious passages in the connecting wings. 
Two of the windows in the wings are adorned with bal- 
conies supported on brackets ; each bracket representing the 
head and shoulders of a crouching captive, in the attitude 
of a gargoyle. The heads and dresses of these captives — 
conceived as they are in a vein of Gothic barbarism — are 
still bright with colour. 

The central, or gateway -tower, is substantially perfect. 
The Writer, with help, got as high as the first chamber ; 
the ceiling of which is painted in a rich and intricate pat- 
tern, as in imitation of mosaic. The top room is difficult of 
access ; but can be reached b}' a, good climber. Our friend 
F. W. S., who made his way up there a year or two before, 
found upon the walls some interesting sculptures of cups and 
vases, apparently part of an illustrated inventory of domes- 
tic utensils. Three of these (unlike any engraved in the 
works of Wilkinson or Rosellini) are here reproduced from 
his sketch made upon the spot. The lid of the smaller vase, 
it will be observed, opens b}^ means of a lever spooned out 
for the thumb to rest in, just like the lid of a German beer- 
mug of the present da3\ 

The external decorations of the two lodges are of especi.'il 
interest. The loAver subjects are historical. Those upon the 

1 " There is reason to believe that tliis is only a fragment of the building, 
and foundations exist which render it prol^able that the whole was originally 
a square of the width of the front, and had other chambers, probably in 
wood or brick, besides those we now find. This would hardly detract from 
the playful character of the design, and when coloured, as it originally was, 
and with its battlements or ornaments complete, it must have formed 
a composition as pleasing as it is unlike our usual conceptions of Egyp- 
tian art." Hist of Architecture, hy 3. YE,UGVSSOT!i, Bk. i., ch. iv., p. 118. 
Lond. 1865. 



THEBES. 403 

upper stones are domestic or symbolical, and are among the 
most celebrated of Egyptian bas-reliefs. They have long 
been supposed to represent Rameses III in his hareem, enter- 
tained and waited upon by female slaves. In one group the 
king, distinguished always by his cartouches, sits at ease in 
a kind of folding chair, his helmet on his head, his sandalled 
feet upon a footstool, as one returned and resting after battle. 
In his left hand he holds a round object like a fruit. With 
the right he chucks under the chin an ear-ringed and neck- 
laced damsel who presents a lotus blossom at his nose. In 
another much mutilated subject, they are represented play- 




ing a game at draughts. This famous subject — which can 
only be seen when the light strikes sidewise — would scarcely 
be intelligible save for the help one derives from the cuts 
in Wilkinson and the plates in Rosellini. It is not that tlie 
sculptures are effaced, but that the great blocks wliich bore 
them are gone from their places, having probably been 
hurled down bodily upon the heads of the enemy during a 
certain siege of which the ruins bear evident traces.^ Of 
the lady, there remains little beside one arm and the hand 
that holds the pawn. The table has disappeared. The 
king has lost his legs. It happens, however, though the 
table is missing, that the block next above it contained the 

1 Medinet Habu continued up to the period of the Arab invasion to be 
inhabited by the Coptic descendants of its ancient builders. They fled, 
however, before Amr and his army, since which time the place has been 
deserted. It is not known whether the siege took place at the time of the 
Arab invasion, or during tlie raid of Cambyses; but whenever it was, the 
place was evidently forced by the besiegers. The author of Murray's 
Handbook draws attention to the fact that the granite jambs of the doorway 
leading to the smaller Temple are cut through exactly at the place where 
the bar was placed across the door. 



404 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

pawns, which can still be discerned from below by the help 
of a glass. Rosellini mentions three or four more subjects 
of a similar character, including a second group of draught- 
players, all visible in his time. The Writer, however, 
looked for them in vain. 

These tableaux are supposed to illustrate the home-life 
of Rameses III, and to confirm the domestic character of the 
pavilion. Even the scarab-selling Arabs that haunt the ruins, 
even the donkey-boys of Luxor, call it the Hareem of the 
Sultan. Modern science, however, threatens to dispel one at 
least of these pleasant fancies. 

The king, it seems, under the name of Ehampsinitus, is 
the hero of a very ancient legend related by Herodotus. 
While he yet lived, -runs the story, he descended into Hades, 
and there played a game at draughts with the Goddess 
Demeter, from whom he won a golden napkin ; in memory of 
which adventure, and of his return to earth, "the Egyptians," 
says Herodotus, " instituted a festival which they certainly 
celebrated in my day." ^ In another version as told by 
Plutarch, Isis is substituted for Demeter. Viewing these 
tales by the light of a certain passage of the Ritual, in which 
the happy dead is promised " power to transform himself at 
will, to play at draughts, to repose in a pavilion," Dr. Birch 
has suggested that the whole of this scene may be of a 
memorial character, and represent an incident in the Land 
of Shades.^ 

Below these "hareem" groups come colossal bas-reliefs 
of a religious and military character. The King, as usual, 
smites his prisoners in presence of the Gods. A slender and 
spirited figure in act to slay, the fiery hero strides across the 
wall "like Baal^ descended from the lieights of heaven. 
His limbs are endued with the force of victory. With his 

1 Herodotus, Bk. ii. chap. 122. 

2 " A Medinet Habou, dans son palais, il s'est fait representer jouant 
aux dames avec des femmes qui, d'apres certaines copies, semblent porter 
sur la tete les fleurs symboliques de I'Egypte superieure et inferieure, 
comme les deesses du monde superieur et inferieur, ou du ciel et de la 
terre. Cette dualite des deesses, qui est indiquee dans les scenes religieuses 
et les textes sacres par la reunion de Satis et Anoucis, Pasht et Bast, Isis 
et Nephthys, etc., me fait penser que les tableaux de Medinet Habou peu- 
vent avoir ete consideres dans les legendes populaires comme offrant aux 
yeux I'allegorie de la scene du jeu de dames enti-e le roi et la de'esse Isis, 
dont Herodote a fait la Demeter egyptienne, comme il a fait d'Osiris le 
Dionysus du meme peuple." — Le Roi Rhatnpsinite et le Jeu des Damest, 
par S. Birch. Revue Arch.: Nouvelle Serie, vol. xii., p. 58. Paris: 1805. 

3 Baal, written sometimes Bar, was, like Sutekh, a God borrowed from 
the Phoenician mythology. The worship of Baal seems to have been 



THEBES. 405 

right hand he seizes the multitudes ; his left reaches like an 
arrow after those who fly before hiin. His sword is sharp 
as that of his father Mentu." ^ 

Below these great groups run friezes sculptured with 
kneeling figures of vanquished chiefs, among whom are 
Libyan, Sicilian, Sardinian, and Etruscan leaders. Every 
head in these friezes is a portrait. The Libyan is beardless ; 
his lips are thin ; his nose is hooked ; his forehead retreats ; 
he wears a close-litting cap with a pendant hanging in front 
of the ear. The features of the Sardinian chiefs are no less 
Asiatic. He wears the usual Sardinian helmet surmounted 
by a ball and two spikes. The profile of the Sicilian closely 
resembles that of the Sardinian. He wears a headdress like 
the modern Persian cap. As ethnological types, these heads 
are extremely valuable. Colonists not long since departed 
from the western coasts of Asia Minor, these early European 
settlers are seen with the Asiatic stamp of features; a stamp 
which has row entirely disappeared. 

Other European nations are depicted elsewhere in these 
Medinet Habu sculptures. Pelasgiaus from the Greek isles, 
Oscans perhaps from Pompeii, Daunians from the districts 
between Tarentum and Brundusium, figure here, each in 
their national costume. Of these, the Pelasgian alone re- 
sembles the modern European. On the left \vall of the 
pavilion gateway, going up towards the Temple, there is a 
large bas-relief of Rameses III leading a string of captives 
into the presence of Amen-Ra. Among these, the sculptures 
being in a high state of preservation, there are a number of 
Pelasgians, some of whom have features of the classical 
Greek type, and are strikingly handsome. The Pelasgic 
headdress resembles our old infantry shako ; and some of 

introduced into Egypt during the XlXth Dynasty. The other God here 
mentioned, Mentu or Month, was a solar deity adored in the Thebaid, and 
especially worshipped at Hermonthis, now Erraent ; a modem town of 
some importance, the name of which is still almost identical with the Per- 
Mentu of ancient days. Mentu was the Egyptian, and Baal the Phoenician, 
god of war. 

i From one of the inscriptions at Medinet Habu, quoted by Chabas. 
See Antiqxdte Historiqve, ch. iv. p. 238. Ed. 1873. 

* It is a noteworthy fact (and one which has not, so far as I know, been 
previously noticed) that while the Asiatic and African chiefs represented 
in these friezes are insolently described in the accompanying hieroglyphic 
inscriptions as " the vile Libyan," "the vile Kushite," "the vile Mash- 
uasha," and so forth, the European leaders, though likewise prostrate and 
bound, are more respectfully designated as "the Great (<xr>) of Sar- 
dinia," " the Great of Sicily," " the Great of Etruria," etc. etc. May this 
be taken as an indication that their strength as military powers was 
already more formidable than that of the Egyptians' nearer neighbours? 



406 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP TEE NILE. 

the men wear disk-shaped amulets pierced with a hole in 
the centre, through which is passed the chain that suspends 
it round the neck. 

Leaving to the left a fine sitting statue of Khons in 
green basalt, and to the right his prostrate fellow, we pass 
under the gateway, cross a space of desolate crude-brick 
mounds, and see before us the ruins of the first pylcn of the 
Great Temple of Khem. Once past the threshold of this 
pylon, we enter upon a succession of magnificent courtyards. 
The hieroglyphs here are on a colossal scale, and are cut 
deeper than any others in Egypt. They are also coloured 
with a more subtle eye to effect. Struck by the unusual 
splendour of some of the blues, and by a peculiar look of 
scintillation which they assumed in certain lights, I exam- 
ined them particularly, and found that the effect had been 
produced by very subtle shades of gradation in what ap- 
peared at first sight to be simple flat tints. In some of the 

reeds (1), for instance, the ground-colour begins at the top 

of the leaf in pure cobalt, and passes imperceptibly down to 
a tint that is almost emerald green at the bottom.^ 

The inner walls of this great courtyard, and the outer 
face of the north-east wall, are covered with sculptures out- 
lined, so to say, in intaglio, and relieved in the hollow, so 
that the forms, though rounded, remain level with the gen- 
eral surface. In these tableaux the old world lives again. 
Kameses III, his sons and nobles, his armies, his foes, play 
once more the brief drama of life and death. Great battles 
are fought; great victories are won ; the slain are counted ; 
the captured drag their chains behind the victor's chariot ; 
the king triumphs, is crowned, and sacrifices to the Gods. 
Elsewhere more wars ; more slaughter. There is revolt in 
Libya; there are raids on the Asiatic border; there are 
invaders coming in ships from the islands of the Great Sea. 
The royal standard is raised ; troops assemble ; arms are 
distributed. Again the king goes forth in his might, fol- 
lowed by the flower of Egyptian chivalry. " His horsemen 
are heroes ; his foot soldiers are as lions that roar in the 
mountains." The king himself flames "like Mentu in his 

1 The grand blue of the ceiling of the colonnade of the Great Hypae- 
thral Court is also very remarkable for brilliancy and purity of tone; 
while to those interested in decoration the capital and abacus of the sec- 
ond column to the right on entering this courtyard, offers an interesting 
specimen of polychrome ornamentation on a gold-coloured ground. 



THEBES. 



407 




408 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

hour of wrath." He falls upon the foe "with the swiftness 
of a meteor." Here, crowded in rude bullock-trucks, they 
seek safety in flight. Yonder their galleys are sunk ; their 
warriors are slain, drowned, captured, scathed, as it were, in 
a devouring tire. "Never again will they sow seed or reap 
harvest on the fair face of the earth." 

"Behold ! " says the Pharaoh, " Behold, I have taken their 
frontiers for my frontiers ! I have devastated their to'.vus, 
burned their crops, trampled their people under foot. Ee- 
joice, Egypt ! Exalt thy voice to the heavens ; for behold ! 
I reign over all the lands of the barbarians ! I, King of 
Upper and Lower Egypt, Raineses III ! " ^ 

Such, linked each to each by a running commentary of 
text, are the illustrations ; the story is written elsewhere. 
Elaborately hieroglyphed in upwards of seventy closely 
packed columns, it covers the whole eastern face of the great 
north tower of the second propylon. This propylon divides 
the Osiride and Hypaethral courts, so that the inscription 
faces those entering the Temple and precedes the tableaux. 
Not even the poem of Pentaur is more picturesque, not even 
the Psalms of David are more fervid, than the style of this 
great Chronicle.^ 

The Writer pitched her tent in the doorway of the first 
propylon, and thence sketched the north-west corner of the 
courtyard, including the tower with the inscription and the 
Osiride colossi. The accompanying illustration faithfully 
reproduces that sketch. The roof of the colonnade to the 
right is cumbered with crude-brick ruins of mediaeval date. 
The hieroglyphs, sculptured along the architrave and down 
the sides of the pillars, are still bright with colour. The 
colossi are all the worse for 3000 years of ill-usage. Through 
the sculptured doorway opposite, one looks across the 
Hypaethral Court, and catches a glimpse of the ruined Hall 
of Pillars beyond. 

While the Writer was at work in the shade of the first 
pylon, an Arab story-teller took possession of that opposite 
doorway, and entertained the donkey-boys and sailors. Well 
paid with a little tobacco and a few copper piastres, he went 
on for hours, his shrill chant rising every now and then to a 

1 Inscriptions at Medinet Habu. See Chabas' AntiquM Historique, 
chap. iv. Paris : 1876. 

2 The whole of tliis chronicle is translated by M. Chabas in V Antiquity 
Histo-riqve, chap. iv. p. 246 et seq. It is also engraved in full in Rosellini 
{Monvmenti Storici) ; and has been admirably photographed by both M. 
Hammerschmidt and Signor Beata. 




LEMPLE DF USIRIH. 



THEBES. 409 

quavering scream. He was a wizened, grizzled old fellow, 
miserably poor and tattered ; but he had the Arabian Nights 
and hundreds of other tales by heart. 

Mariette was of opinion that the Temple of Medinet Habu 
erected as it is on the side of the great Theban necropolis, is, 
like the Ramesseum, a funerary monument erected by Ba- 
rneses 111 in his own lifetime to his own memory. These 
battered colossi represent the king in the character of Osiris, 
and are in fact on a huge scale precisely what the ordinary 
funerary statuettes are upon a small scale. They would be 
out of place in any but a monumental edifice ; and they alone 
suifice to determine the character of the building. 

And such, no doubt, was the character of the Ameno- 
phium ; of tiie little Temple called Dayr el Medinet; of the 
Temple of Queen Hatshepsu, known as Dayr el Bahari ; of 
the Temple of Gournah ; of almost every important structure 
erected upon this side of the river. Of the Amenophium 
there remain only a few sculptured blocks, a few confused 
foundations, and — last rejiresentatives of an avenue of stat- 
ues of various sizes — the famous Colossi of the Plain. ^ The 
Temple of Dayr el Bahari — built in terraces up the moun- 
tain side, and approached once upon a time by a magnificent 
avenue of sphinxes, th3 course of which is yet visible — 
would probably be, if less ruined, the most interesting temple 
on the western side of the river. The monumental intention 

1 These two statues — the best-known, probably, of all Egyptian nioiiii- 
raents — have been too often described, painted, engiaved, and photo- 
graphed, to need more tlian a passing reference. Their featureless faces, 
their attitude, their surroundings, are familiar as the Pyramids, even to 
those who know not Egypt. We all know that they represent Amenhotep. 
or Amunoph, III : and that the northernmost was shattered to the waist 
by the earthquake of b.c. 27. Being heard to give out a musical sound 
during the first hour of the day, the statue was supposed by the ancients 
to be endowed with a miraculous voice. The Greeks, believing it to repre- 
sent the fabled son of Tithonus and Aurora, gave it the name of Memnon ; 
notwithstanding that the Egyptians themselves claimed the statues as 
portraits of Amenhotep III. Prefects, Consuls, Empei'ors, and Empresses, 
came "to hear Meninon," as the phrase then ran. Among the famous 
visitors who travelled thither on this errand, we tind Strabo, Germanicus, 
Hadrian, and the Empress Sabina. Opinion is divided as to the cause of 
this sound. There is undoubtedly a hollow space inside the throne of 
this statue, as may be seen by all who examine it from behind ; and Sir G. 
"Wilkinson, in expressing his conviction that the musical sound was a piece 
of priestly jugglery, represents the opinion of the majority. The author 
of a carefully considered article in the Quarterly Re.viev;, No. 276, April 
1875, coincides with Sir D. Brewster in attributing the sound to a trans- 
mission of rarefied air through the crevices of the stone, caused by the 
sudden change of temperature consequent on the rising of the sun. The 
statu*^, which, like its companion, was originally one solid monolith of grit- 
stone, was repaired with san Iston-^ iluring the reign of Septimius Scverus 



410. ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

of this building is shown by its dedication to Hathor, the 
Lady of Amenti.; and by the fact that the tomb of Queen 
Hatshepsu was identified by Khind some twenty-five years 
ago as one of the excavated sepulchres in the cliff-side, close 
to where the temple ends by abutting against the rock. 

As for the Temple of Gournah, it is, at least in part, as 
distinctly a memorial edifice as the Medici Chapel at Florence 
or the Superga at Turin. It was begun by Seti I in memory 
of his father Rameses I, the founder of the XlXth Dynasty. 
Seti, however, died before the work was completed. Here- 
upon Rameses II, his son and successor, extended the gen- 
eral plan, finished the part dedicated to his grandfather, and 
added sculptures to the memory of Seti I. Later still, Me- 
nepthah, the son and successor of Rameses II, left his car- 
touches upon one of the doorways. The whole building, in 
short, is a family monument, and contains a family portrait 
gallery. Here all the personages whose names figure in the 
shrines of the Ramessides at Silsilis are depicted in their 
proper persons. In one tableau, Rameses I, defunct, deified,^ 
swathed, enshrined, and crowned like Osiris, is worshipped 
by Seti I. Behind Seti stands his Queen Tuaa, the mother 
of Rameses II. Elsewhere Seti I, being now dead, is deified 
and worshipped by Rameses II, who pours a libation to his 
father's statue. Through all these handsome heads there runs 
a striking family likeness. All more or less partake of that 
Dantesque type which characterises the portraits of Rameses 
II in his youth. The features of Rameses I and Seti I are 
somewhat pinched and stern, like the Dante of elder days. 
The delicate profile of Queen Tuaa, which is curiously like 
some portraits of Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps too angular to 
be altogether pleasing. But in the well-known face of Ra- 
meses II these harsher details vanish, and the beauty of the 
race culminates. The artists of Egyptian Renaissance, al- 
ways great in profile-portraitui*e, are nowhere seen to better 
advantage than in this interesting series. 

1 This deification of the dead was not deification in the Roman sense ; 
neither was it canonisation in the modern sense. The Egyptians believed 
the justified dead to be assimilated, or rather identified, in the spirit with 
Osiris, the beneficent Judge and Deity of the lower world. Thus, in their 
worship of ancestry, they adored not mortals immortalised, but the dead 
in Osiris, and Osiris in the dead. 

It is worth noting, by the way, that notwithstanding the subsequent 
deification of Seti I, Rameses I remained, so to say, the tutelary saint 
of the Temple. He alone is represented with the curious pointed and 
upturned beard, like a chamois horn reversed, which is the peculiar 
attribute of deity. 



THEBES. 411 , 

Adjoining what may be called the monumental part of the 
building, we tiud a number of halls and chambers, the uses 
of wliich are unknown. Most writers assume that they were 
the private apartments of the King. Some go so far as to 
give the name of Temple-Palaces to all these great funerary 
structures. It is, however, far more probable that these 
^Vestern Temples were erected in connection, though not in 
direct communication, with the royal tombs in the adjacent 
valley of Bab-el-Moluk. 

Now every Egyptian tomb of importance has its outer 
chamber or votive oratory, the walls of which are covered 
with paintings descriptive, in some instances, of the occupa- 
tions of the deceased upon earth, and in others of the adven- 
tures of his soul after death. Here at stated seasons the 
survivors repaired with oiferings. No priest, it would seem, 
of necessity officiated at these little services. A whole fam- 
ily would come, bringing the first fruits of their garden, the 
best of their poultry, cakes of home-made bread, bouquets of 
lotus blossoms. With their own hands they piled the altar ; 
and the eldest son, as representative of the rest, burned the 
incense and poured the libations. It is a scene constantly 
reproduced upon monuments ^ of every epoch. These votive 
oratories, however, are wholly absent in the valley of Bab-el- 
Moluk. The royal tombs consist of only tunnelled passa.ges 
and sepulchral vaults, the entrances to which were closed for 
ever as soon as the sarcophagus was occupied ; hence it may 
be concluded that each memorial temple played to the tomb 
of its tutelary saint and sovereign that part which is })layed 
by the external oratory attached to the tomb of a private in- 
dividual. Nor must it be forgotten that as early as the time 
of the Pyramid Kings, there was a votive chapel attached to 
every pyramid, the remains of which are traceable in almost 
every instance, on the east side. There were also priests of 
the pyramids, as we learn from innumerable funerary in- 
scriptions. 

An oratory on so grand a scale would impl}" an elaborate 

i There is among the funereal tablets of the Boulak collection a small 
bas-relief sculpture representing the arrival of a family of mourners at the 
tomb of a deceased ancestor. The statue of the defunct sits at the upper 
end. The mourners are laden with offerings. One little child carries a 
lamb ; another a goose. A scribe stands by, waiting to register the gifts. 
The tablet commemorates one Psamtik-nefar-Sam, a hierogrammate under 
some king of the XXVIth Dynasty. The natural grace and simple pathos 
with which this little frieze is treated lift it far above the level of ordinary 
Egyptian art, and bear comparison with the class of monuments lately 
discovered on the Eleusinian road at Athens. 



412 oyE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

ceremonial. A dead and deified king would doubtless have 
his train of priests, his daily liturgies, processions, and sacri- 
fices. All this again implies additional accommodation, and 
accounts, I venture to think, for any number of extra halls 
and chambers. Such sculptures as yet remain on the walls 
of these ruined apartments are, in fact, wholly funereal and 
sacrificial in character. It is also to be remembered that we 
have here a temple dedicated to two kings, and served most 
likely by a twofold college of priests. -^ 

The wall-sculptures at Gournah are extremely beautiful, 
especially those erected by Seti I. Where it has been acci- 
dentally preserved, the surface is as smooth, the execution 
as brilliant, as the finest mediaeval ivory carving. Behind a 
broken column, for instance, that leans against the south- 
west wall of the sanctuary, ^ one may see, by peeping this 
way and that, the ram's-head prow of a sacred boat, quite 
unharmed, and of surpassing delicacy. The modelling of 
the ram's head is simply faultless. It would indeed be 
scarcely too much to say that tliis one fragment, if all the 
rest had perished, Avould alone place the decorative sculpture 
of ancient Egypt in a rank second only to that of Greece. 

The Temple of Gournah — northernmost of the Theban 
group — stands at the month of that famous valley called by 
the Arabs Bab-el-Moluk, ^ and by travellers, the Valley of 
the Tombs of the Kings. This valley may be described as a 
bifurcated ravine, ending in two culs-de-sac, and hemmed in 
on all sides by limestone precipices. It winds round behind 
the cliffs which face Luxor and Karnak. and runs almost 
parallel with the Nile. This range of cliffs is perforated on 
both sides with tombs. The priests and nobles of many 
dynasties were buried terrace above terrace on the side next 
the river. Back to back with them, in the silent and secret 
valley beyond, slept the kings in their everlasting sepulchres. 

Most travellers moor for a day or two at Karnak, and 
thence make their excursion to Babel-el-Moluk. By so 
doing they lose one of the most interesting rides in the neigh- 
bourhood of Thebes. L. and the Writer started from Luxor 

1 " Une dignite tout a fait particulier est celle que les inscriptions 
hieroglyphiques designent par le titre ' prophete de la pyramide, de tel 
pharaon.' II parait qu'apres sa mort cliaque roi; etait veneie par un cults 
special." Histoire d'Egypte: Brugsch. 2d ed. chap. v. p. 35. Leipzig: 
1875. . _. 

2 There is a very curious window at the end of this sanctuary, with 
grooves for the shutter, and holes in which to slip and drop the bar by 
wh'ch it was fastened. 

3 The Gate of the Kuigr. 



TlIl'JIiES. 413 

one morning about an hour after daybreak, crossing the river 
at the usual point and thence riding northwards along the 
bank, with the Nile on the one hand, and the corn-lands on 
the other. In the course of such rides, one discovers the 
almost incredible fertility of the Thebaid. Every inch of 
arable ground is turned to account. All that grows, grows 
lustily. The barley ripples iu one uninterrupted sweep 
from Medinet Habu to a point half-way between the Rames- 
seuni and Gouruah. Next come plantations of tobacco, cot- 
ton, hemp, linseed, maize and lentils, so closely set, so rich 
in promise, that the countrj^ looks as if it were laid out in 
allotment grounds for miles together. Where the rice crop 
has been gathered, clusters of temporary huts liave sprung 
up in the clearings ; for the fellahin come out from their 
crowded villages in "the sweet o' the year," and live in the 
midst of the crops which now they guard, and which 
presently they will reap. The walls of these summer huts 
are mere wattled fences of Indian corn straw, with bundles 
of the same laid lightly across the top by way of roofing. 
This pastoral world is everywhere up and doing. Here are 
men plying the shaduf by the river's brink ; women spinning 
in the sun ; children playing ; dogs barking ; larks soaring 
and singing overhead. Against the foot of the cliffs j^onder, 
where the vegetation ends and the tombs begin, there flows 
a calm river edged with palms. A few months ago, we 
should have been deceived by that fairy water. We know 
now that it is tl>e mirage. 

Striking off by and by towards the left, we make for a 
point where the mountains recede and run low, and a wedge- 
like " spit " of sandy desert encroaches upon the plain. On 
the verge of this spit stands a clump of sycamores and palms. 
A row of old yellow columns supporting a sculptured archi- 
trave gleams through the bouglis; a little village nestles 
close by ; and on the desert slope beyond, in the midst of a 
desolate Arab burial-ground, we see a tiny mosque with one 
small cupola, dazzling white in the sunshine. This is Gour- 
nah. There is a spring here, and some girls are drawing 
water from the well near the temple. Our donkeys slake 
tlieir thirst from the cattle-trough — a broken sarcophagus 
that may once have held the mummy of a king. A creaking 
sakkieh is at work yonder, turned by a couple of red cows 
with mild Hathor-like faces. The old man who drives them 
sits in the middle of the cogwheel, and goes slowly round as 
if he was being roasted. 



414 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

We now leave, behind us the well, and the trees, and the 
old Greek-looking Temple, and turn our faces westward, 
bound for an opening yonder among clitfs pitted with the 
inouths of empty tombs. It is plain to see that we are now 
entering upon what was once a torrent-bed. Rushing down 
from the hills, the pent-up waters have here spread fan-like 
over the slope of the desert, strewing the ground with boul- 
ders, and ploughing it into hundreds of tortuous channels. 
Up that torrent-bed lies our road to-day. 

The weird rocks stand like sentinels to right and left as 
one enters the mouth of the valley, and take strange shapes 
as of obelisks and sphinxes. Some, worn at the base, and 
towering like ruined pyramids above, remind us of tombs 
on the Appian Way. As the ravine narrows, the limestone 
walls rise higher. The chalky track glares under-foot. 
Piles of shivered chips sparkle and scintillate at the foot of 
the rocks. The cliffs burn at a white heat. The atmosphere 
palpitates like gaseous vapour. The sun blazes overhead. 
Not a breath stirs; neither is there a finger's breadth of 
shade on either side. It is like riding into the mouth of a 
furnace. Meanwhile, one looks in vain for any sign of life. 
No blade of green has grown here since the world began. 
No breathing creature makes these rocks its home. All is 
desolation — such desolation as one dreams of in a world 
scathed by fire from heaven. 

When we have gone a long way, always tracking up the 
bed of the torrent, we come to a place where our donkeys 
turn off from the main course and make for what is evi- 
dently a forced passage cut clean through a wall of solid 
lijuestone. The place was once a mere recess in the cliffs ; 
but on the farther side, masked by a natural barrier of rock, 
there lay another valley leading to a secluded amphitheatre 
among the mountains. The first Pharaoh who chose his 
place of burial among those hidden ways, must have been he 
who cut the pass and levelled the road by which we now 
travel. This cutting is Bab-el-Moluk — the Gate of the 
King; a name which doubtless perpetuates that by which 
the place was know to the old Egyptians. Once through 
the Gate, a grand mountain rises into view. Egypt is the 
land of strange mountains ; and here is one which reproduces 
on a giant scale every feature of the pyramid of Ouenephes 
at Sakkarah. It is square ; it rises stage above stage in 
ranges of columnar cliffs with slopes of debris between ; and 
it terminates in a blunt four-sided peak nearly 1800 feet 
above the level of the plain. 



THEBES. 415 

Keeping this mountain always before us, we now follow 
the windings of the second valley, whicli is even more narrow, 
parched, and glaring than the first. Perhaps the intense 
heat makes the road appear longer than it really is ; but it 
seems to us like several miles. At lengtli the uniformity of 
the way is broken. Two small ravines branch off, one to the 
right, one to the left; and in both, at the foot of the rocks, 
there are here and there to be seen square openings, like 
cellar-doors, half sunk below the surface, and seeming to 
shoot downwards into the bowels of the earth. In another 
moment or so, our road ends suddenly in a Avild tumbled 
waste, like an exhausted quarry, shut in all round by im- 
pending precipices, at the base of which more rock-cut por- 
tals peep out at different points. 

From the moment when it first came into sight, I had 
made certain that in that pyramidal mountain we should find 
the Tombs of the Kings — so certain, that I can scarcely 
believe our guide when he assures us that these cellars are 
the places. we have come to see, and that the mountain con- 
tains not a single tomb. We alight, however ; climb a steep 
slope ; and find ourselves on the threshold of No. 17. 

" Belzoni-tomb," says our guide ; and Belzoni's tomb, as we 
know, is the tomb of Seti the First. 

I am almost ashamed to remember now that we took our 
luncheon in the shade of that solemn vestibule, and rested 
and made merry, before going down into the great gloomy 
sepulchre whose staircases and corridors plunged away into 
the darkness below, as if they led straight to tlie land of 
Amenti. 

The tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Moltik are as unlike 
the tombs in the cliffs opposite Luxor as if the Theban kings 
and the Theban nobles were of different races and creeds. 
Those sacred scribes and dignitaries, with their wives and 
families and their numerous friends and dependants, were a 
joyous set. They loved the things of this life, and would 
fain have carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into 
the land beyond the grave. So they decorated the walls of 
their tombs with pictures of the way in which their lives 
were spent, and hoped perhaps that the mummy, dreaming 
away its long term of solitary waiting, might take comfort 
in those shadowy reminiscences. The kings, on the contrary, 
covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from the 
life to come. The wanderings of the soul after its separation 
from the body, the terrors and dangers that beset it during 



416 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

its journey through Hades, the demons it must fight, the 
accusers to whom it must answer, the transformations it 
uKnt undergo, afforded subjects for endless illustration. Of 
the fishing and fowling and feasting and junketing that Ave 
saw the other day in those terraces behind the Kamesseum, 
we discover no trace in the tombs of Bab-el-Moluk. In place 
of singing and lute-playing, we find here prayers and invoca- 
tions ; for the pleasant Nile-boat, and the water-parties, and 
the chase of the gazelle and the ibex, we now have the bark 
of Charon, and the basin of purgatorial fire, and the strife 
with the infernal deities. The contrast is sharp and strange. 
It is as if an Epicurean aristocracy had been ruled by a line 
oE Puritan kings. The tombs of the subjects are Anacreon- 
tics. The tombs oi their sovereigns are penitential psalms. 
To go down into one of these great sepulchres is to descend 
one's self into the Lower World, and to tread the path of the 
shades. Crossing the threshold, we look up — half-expecting 
to read those terrible words in which all who enter are 
warned to leave hope behind them. The passage slopes 
before our feet ; the daylight fades behind us. At the end 
of the passage comes a flight of steps, and from the bottom 
of that flight of steps we see another corridor slanting down 
into depths of utter darkness. The walls on both sides are 
covered with close-cut columns of liieroglyphic text, inter- 
spersed with ominous shai)es, half-deity, half-den:ion. Huge 
serpents writhe beside us along the walls, (luardian spirits 
of threatening as])ect advance, brandishing swords of flame. 
A strange heaven opens overhead — a heaven where the stars 
travel in boats across the seas of space ; and the Sun, escorted 
by the hours, the months, and the signs of the zodiac, issues 
from the East, sets in the West, and traverses the liemisphere 
of Everlasting Night. We go on, and the last gleam of day- 
light vanishes in the distance. Another flight of steps leads 
now to a succession of passages and halls, some smaller, 
some larger, some vaulted, some supported on pillars. Here 
yawns a great pit half full of debris. Yonder opens a suite 
of unfinished chambers abandoned by the workmen. The 
farther we go, the more weird become our surroundiiigs. 
The walls swarm with ugly and evil tilings. Serpents, and 
bats, and crocodiles, some with human heads and legs, some 
vomiting fire, some armed with spears and darts, pursue and 
torture the wicked. These unfortunates have their hearts 
torn out; are boiled in cauldrons; are suspended head down- 
wards over seas of flame ; are speared, decapitated, and 



TIUCllKS. 417 

driven in headless gangs to scenes of further torment. Be- 
held by the dim and shifting light of a few candles, these 
painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly reality. They 
start into life as we pass, then drop behind us into darkness. 
That darkness alone is awful. The atmosphere is suffo- 
cating. The place is ghostly and peopled with nightmares. 

Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun 
emerges from the lower hemisphere. The justilied dead 
sow and reap in the Elysian fields, gather celestial fruits, 
and bathe in the waters of truth. The royal mummy reposes 
in its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshipped 
with incense, and offerings of meat, and libations of wine.'^ 
Finally the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last 
stage of his spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the Gods, 
ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into the 
Abode of the Blest.^ 

Coming out for a moment into blinding daylight, we drink 
a long draught of pure air, cross a few yards of uneven 
ground, arrive at the mouth of another excavation, and 
plunge again into underground darkness. A third and a 
fourth time we repeat this strange experience. It is like 
a feverish sleep, troubled by gruesome dreams, and broken 
by momentary wakings. 

These tombs in a general way are very much alike. Some 
are longer than others ; ^ some loftier. In some the descent 
is gradual; in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading 

1 These funerary statues are represented each on a stand or platform, 
erect, with one foot advanced, as if walking, the right hand holding the 
ankh, or sj^mbol of life, the left hand grasping a staff. The attitude is that 
of the wooden statue at Boulak ; and it is worth remark that the figures 
stand detached, with no support at the back, which was never the case with 
those carved in stone or granite. There can be no doubt that this curious 
series of funerary statues repi'esents those which were actually placed in the 
tomb ; and that the ceremonies here represented were actually performed 
before them, previous to closing the mouth of the sepulchre. ■ One of these 
very wooden statues, from this very tomb, was brought to England by 
Belzoni, and is now in the British Museum (No. 854, Csntral Saloon). The 
wood is much decayed, and the statue ought undoubtedly to be placed 
under glass. The tableaux representing the above ceremonies are well 
copied in Rosellini, Mmi. del Culto, plates 60-63. 

2 A remarkable inscription in this tomb, relating the wrath Df Ra and 
the destruction of mankind, is translated by M. Naville, vol. iv. Pt. i. 
Translations of the Biblical Arch. Societal. In this singular myth, wh'ch 
bears a family resemblance to the Chaldsean record of the Floo 1, the deluge 
is a deluge of human blood. The inscription covers the walls of a small 
chamber known as the Chamber of the Cow. 

3 The longest tomb in the valley, which is that of Seti I, measures 
470 feet in length to the point where it is closed by the falling in of the 
rock ; and the total depth of its descent is about iSO feet. The tomb of 



418 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

features are common to all. The great serpent/ the scarab,^ 
the bat,® the crocodile,* are always conspicuous on the walls- 
The judgment-scene, and the well-known typical picture 
of the four races of mankind, are continually reproduced. 
Some tombs,^ however, vary both in plan and decoration. 
That of Rameses III, though not nearly so beautiful as the 
tomb of Seti I, is perhaps the most curious of all. The 
paintings here are for the most part designed on an unsculp- 
tured surface coated with white stucco. The drawing is 
often indifferent, and the colouring is uniformly coarse and 
gaudy. Yellow abounds ; and crude reds and blues remind 
us of the coloured picture-books of our childhood. It is diffi- 
cult to understand, indeed, how the builder of Medinet Habu, 
with the best Egyptian art of the day at his command, should 
have been content with such Avall-paintings as these. 

Still Rameses III seems to have had a grand idea of going 
in state to the next world, with his retainers around him. 
In a series of small antechambers opening off from the first 
corridor, we see depicted all the household furniture, all the 
plate, the weapons, the wealth and treasure of the king. 
Upon the walls of one the cooks and bakers are seen prepar- 
ing the royal dinner. In the others are depicted magnificent 
thrones ; gilded galleys with parti-coloured sails ; gold and 
silverv ases ; rich store of arms and armour ; piles of pre- 
cious woods, of panther skins, of fruits, and birds, and curi- 
ous baskets, and all such articles of personal luxury as a 
palace-building Pharaoh might delight in. Here also are 
the two famous harpers ; cruelly defaced, but still sweeping 
the strings with the old powerful touch that erewhile soothed 

Rameses III (No. 11) measures in length 405 feet, and descends only 31 
feet. The rest average from about 350 to 150 feet in length, and the 
shortest is excavated to a distance of only 65 feet. 

We visited, however, one tomb in the Assaseef, which in extent far 
exceeds any of the tombs of the kings. This astonishing excavation, which 
consists of a bewildering labyrinth of halls, passages, staircases, pits, and 
chambers, is calculated at 23,809 square feet. The name of the occupant 
was Petamunap, a priest of uncertain date. 

1 Apophis, in Egyptian Apap ; the great serpent of darkness, over 
whom Ra must triumph after he sets in the west, and before he again rises 
in the east. 

2 Kheper, the scarab deity. See chap. vi. p. 102. 

3 Symbolical of darkness. 

■* The crocodile represents Sebek. In one of the Boulak papyri, this 
God is called the son of Isis, and combats the enemies of Osiris. Here he 
combats Apophis in behalf of Ra. 

5 The tomb numbered 3 in the first small ravine to the left as one rides 
up the valley, bears the cartouches of Rameses II. The writer crawled 
in as far as the choked condition of the tomb permitted, but the passage 
becomes quite impassable after the first thirty or forty yards. 



THEBES. 419 

the king in his hours of melancholy. These two spirited 
figures — which are undoubtedly portraits^ — almost redeem 
the poverty of the rest of the paintings. 

In many tombs, the empty sarcopliagus yet occupies its 
ancient place.^ We saw one in No. 2 (Rameses IV), and 
another in No. 9 (Rameses VI) ; the first, a grand monolith 
of dark granite, overturned and but little injured ; the second, 
shattered by early treasure-seekers. 

Most of tlie tombs at Bab-el-Moluk were open in Ptolemaic 
times. Being tlien, as now, among the stock sights and 
wonders of Thebes, they were visited by crowds of early 
travellers, who have as usual left their neatly-scribbled 
graffiti on the walls. When and by whom the sepulchres 
were originally violated is of course unknown. Some, doubt- 
less, were sacked by the Persians; others were plundered by 
the Egyptians themselves, long enough before Cambyses. 
Not even in the days of the Ramessides, though a special 
service of guards was told off for duty in " the Great Valley," 
were the kings safe in their tombs. During tiie reign of 
Ranieses IX — whose own tomb is here, and known as No. 6 
— there seems to have been an organised band, not only of 
robbers, but of receivers, who lived by depredations of the 
kind. A contemporary papyrus * tells how in one instance 

1 "When first seen by Sir Gr. Wilkinsoa, t'.nsa harp3r3 were still in such 
good preservation, that he reported of one at least, if not both, as obvioasly 
blind. The harps are magnificent, richly inlaid ani glide 1, and adornai 
with busts of the king. 0;i3 has eleven strings, the other fourteen. 

2 The sarcophagus of S3ti I, which was brought to England by B3lzoni, 
is in Sir J. Some's Maseum. It is carved fron a single blo3k of the finast 
alabaster, and is covered with incised hiei-o^lyp lie texts anl several hun- 
dred figures, descriptive o£ the passage of the sun through the hours of the 
night. See Le Sarzophage de Seti I. P. PiEaaEr. Recue Arch. vol. xxi. 
p. 285 : 1870. 

The sarcophagus of Rameses III is in the Fitz-William Museum, Cam- 
bridge, and the lid th3reof is in the Egyptian collection of the Louvre. 
See Remarks on th". Sdrsnphaf/ns of Rameses III. S. Birch, LL.D. ; 
Cambridge, 1876. Also Notice Sommaire des Monuments Egyptiens du 
Lovvre. E. db Rouge, p. 51: Paris, 1873. 

3 Abbot Papvrus, British Museum. This papyrus, which has been 
translated by M. Chabas (Melanr/es Egyptologiqiies, 3d Serie: Paris and 
Chalon, 1870), gives a list of royal tombs inspected by an Egyptian Com- 
mission in the month of Athyr (year unknown), during the reign of 
Rameses IX. Among the tombs visited on this occasion mention is 
especially made of " the funeral monument of the king Eu-Aa, which is 
at the north of the Amenophium of the terrace. The monument is broken 
into from the back, at the place where the stela is placed before the monu- 
ment, and having the statue of the king upon the front of the stela, with 
his hound, named Bahuka, between his legs. Verified this day, and found 
intact." Such was the report of the writer of this papyrus of 3,000 years 
ago. And now comes one of the wonders of modem discovery. It was but 



420 ONE THOUSAND MILKS UP THE NILE. 

the royal muininies were found, lying in the dust, their gold 
and silver ornaments, and the treasures of their tombs, all 
stolen. In another instance, a king and his queen AVere 
carried away bodily, to be unrolled and rifled at leisure. 
This curious information is all recorded in the form of a 
report, drawn up by the Commandant of Western Thebes, 
who, with certain other officers and magistrates, officially 
inspected the tombs of the '•' Royal Ancestors" during the 
reign of Rameses IX. 

No royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the 
valley of Bab-el-Moluk. Even that of Seti the First had 
been secretly entered ages before ever Belzoni discovered it. 
He found in it statues of wood and porcelain, and the mummy 
of a bull ; but nothing of value save the sarcophagus, which 
was empty. There can be no doubt that the priesthood were 
largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges. Of 
thirty-nine persons accused by name in the papyrus just 
quoted, seven are priests, and eight are sacred scribes. 

To rob the dead was always a lucrative trade at Thebes; 
and we may be certain that the splendid Pharaohs who slept 
in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings,^ went to their dark 

a few years ago that Mariette, excavating in that part of the Necropolis 
called the Assaseef , which lies to the north of the ruins of the Amen- 
ophiuni, discovered the remains of the tomb of this very king, and the 
broken stela bearing upon its face a full-length bas-relief of King En-Aa 
(or Entef-Aa), with three dogs before him and one between his legs ; the 
dog Bahuka having his name engraved over his back in hieroglyphic 
characters. — See Tablet of Antefaa II. S. Birch, LL.D. Transactions of 
the Biblical Arch. Society, vol. iv. part i. p. 172. 

i The beautiful jewels found upon the mummy of Queen Aah-Hotep 
show how richly the royal dead were adorned, and how well worth plunder- 
ing their sepulchres must have been. These jewels have been so often 
photographed, engraved, and described, that they are familiar to even those 
who have not seen them in the Boulak Museum. The circumstances of the 
discovery wera suspic'o is, the mu n ny (in its inner rauintny-case only) 
having bsen found by Miriette's digijn-s in the loosa sand but a few feet 
bslow the surface, near th3 fo.i'; o; t'i3 hillside known as Drah Abu'l 
Neggah, bstween Gournah an I V.m opening to the Valley of the Tombs of 
the Kings. When it is reme-nbere 1 that the great outer sarcophagus of this 
Qaean was foanl in 1881 in the famous vault at Dayr-el-Bahari, where so 
many royal personages and relics were discovered "at one fell swoop;" 
anl when to this is added the curious fact that the state axe of Prince 
Kames, and a variety of beautiful poniards and other m'scellaneous ob- 
jects of value were found laid in the loose folds of this Queen's outer 
wrappings, it seems to me that the mystery of her unsepulchred burial is 
susceptible of a very simple explanation. My own conviction is that 
Queen Aah-Hotep's mummy had simply bsen brought thither from the 
depths of the said vault by the Arabs, who had for so many years possessed 
th3 secret of that famous hiding-place, an i that it was temporarily buried 
in the sand till a convenient opportunity should occur for transporting to 
Luxor. Moreover, it is significant that no jewels were found upon the royal 
mummies in the Dayr-el-Bahari vault, for the reason, no doubt, that they 



TFIEBES. 421 

palaces magnificentl}^ equipped for the life to come.' When, 
indeed, one thinks of the jewels, furniture, vases, ointments, 
clothing, arms, and precious documents which Avere as cer- 
tainly buried in those tombs as the royal mummies for whom 
they were excavated, it seems far more wonderful that the 
parure of one queen should have escaped, rather than that 
all the rest of tliese dead and gone royalties should have 
fallen among thieves. 

Of all tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Moluk, one would 
rather, I think, have discovered that of Rameses III. As he 
was one of the richest of the Pharaohs ^ and an undoubted 
virtuoso in his tastes, so we may be sure that his tomb was 
furnished with all kinds of beautiful and precious things. 
Wiiat would we not give now to find some of those elaborate 
gold and silver vases, those cushioned thrones and sofas, 
those bows and quivers and shirts of mail so carefully cata- 
logued on the walls of the side-chambers in the first corridor ! 
I do not doubt that specimens of all these things were buried 
with the king and left ready for his use. He died, believing 
that his Ka would enjoy and make use of these treasures, 

had long since been taken out and sold. The jewels found with Aah- 
Hotep may therefore have represented the final clearance, and have been 
collected from a variety of other loyal mummy-cases. That the state axe 
of Prince Kames was among them do3S not, I imagine, prove that Prince 
Kames was the husband of Queen Aah-Hotep, but only that he him- 
self was also a tenant of that historic vault. The actual proof that he 
was her husband lies in the fact that the bracelets on her wrists, the diadem 
on her head, and the pectoral ornament on her breast, were engraved, or 
inlaid, with the cartouches of that prince. [Note to Second Edition.] 

1 There is in one of the Papyri of the Louvre a very curious illustration, 
representing — 1st, the funeral procession of one Neb-Set, deceased; 2nd, 
the interior of the sepulchre, with the mummy, the offerings, and the fur- 
niture of the tomb, elaborately drawn and coloured. Among the objects 
hei-e shown are two torches, three vases, a coffer, a mirror, a Kohl bottle, a 
pair of sandals, a staff, a vase for ointment, a perfume bottle, and an ablu- 
tion jar. " These objects, all belonging to the toilette (for the coffer would 
have contained clothing), were placad in the tomb for that day of waking 
which the popular belief pro.nisel to the dead. The tomb was therefore 
fu .nished like the aboles of the living." Translated from T. Deveria, 
Catalogue des ManiiscrU.'< Enuptlens du Louvix' : Paris, 1875, p. 80. The 
plan of the sepulchre of Neb-Set is also drawn upon this papyrus ; and the 
soul of the deceased, represented as a human-headed bird, is shown flying- 
down towards the mummy. A fine sarcophagus in the Boulak museum 
(No. 84) is decorated in like manner with a representation of the mummy 
on its bier being visited, or finally rejoined, by the soul. I liave also in 
my own collection a funeral papyrus vignetted on one side with this same 
subject; and bearing on the revei'se side an architectural elevation of the 
monunient erected over the sepulchre of the deceased. 

- " King Rhampsinitus (Rameses III) was possessed, they said, of great 
riches in silver, indeed, to such an amount that none of the princes, his 
successors, surpassed or even equalled his wealth." Herodotus, Book ii. 
chap. 121. 



422 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

and that his soul would come back after long cycles of pro- 
bation, and make its home once more in the mummied body. 
He thought he should rise as from sleep ; cast off his band- 
ages ; eat and be refreshed, and put on sandals and scented 
vestments, and take his staff in his hand, and go forth again 
into the light of everlasting day. Poor ghost, Avandering 
bodiless through space ! where now are thy funeral-baked 
meats, thy changes of raiment, thy perfumes and precious 
ointments ? Where is that body for which thou wert once 
so solicitous, and without which resurrection^ is impossible? 
One fancies thee sighing forlorn through these desolate halls 
when all is silent and the moon shines down the valley. 

Life at Thebes is made up of incongruities. A morning 
among temples is followed by an afternoon of antiquity- 
hunting; and a day of meditation among tombs winds up 
with a dinner-party on board some friend's dahabeeyah, or a 
fantasia at the British Consulate. L. and the Writer did 
their fair share of antiquity-hunting both at Luxor and else- 
where ; but chiefly at Luxor. I may say, indeed, that our 
life here was one long pursuit of the pleasures of the chase. 
The game, it is true, was prohibited ; but we enjoyed it none 
the less because it was illegal. Perhaps we enjoyed it the 
more. 

There were whispers about this time of a tomb that had 
been discovered on the western side — a wonderful tomb, 
rich in all kinds of treasures. No one, of course, had seen 
these things. Ko one knew who had found them. No one 
knew where they were hidden. But there was a solemn se- 
crecy about certain of the Arabs, and a conscious look about 
some of the visitors, and an air of awakened vigilance about 
the government officials, which savoured of mystery. These 
rumours by and by assumed more definite proportions. Dark 
hints were dropped of a possible papyrus ; the M. B.'s bab- 
bled of mummies ; and an American dahabeeyah, lying inno- 
cently off Karnak, was reported to have a mummy on board. 
Now, neither L. nor the Writer desired to become the happy 

1 Impossible from the Egyptian point of view. " That the body should 
not waste or decay was an object of anxious solicitude ; and for this pur- 
pose various bandlets and amulets, prepared with certain magical prepara- 
tions, and sanctified with certain spells or prayers, or even offerings and 
small sacrifices, were distributed over vai-ious parts of the mummy. In 
some mysterious manner the immortality of the body was deemed as im- 
portant as the passage of the soul ; and at a later period the growth or 
natural reparation of the body was invoked as earnestly as the life or 
passage of the soul to the upp3r regions." — See Introduction to the Fune- 
real Eltual, S. Birch, LL.D., in vol. v. of Bunsen's Ef/ypt : Lond. 18G7. 



THEBES. 428 

proprietor of an ancient Egyptian ; but the papyrus was a 
thing to be thouglit of. In a fatal hour we expressed a wish 
to see it. From that moment every mninmy-snatcher in the 
l)lace regarded us as his lawful prey. Beguiled into one den 
after another, Ave were shown all the stolen goods in Thebes. 
Some of the things were very curious and interesting. In. 
one house we were offered two bronze vases, each with a band 
of delicately engraved hieroglyphs running round the lip ; 
also a square stand of basket-work in two colours, precisely 
like that engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson's first volume,^ after 
the original in the Berlin Museum. Pieces of mummy-case 
and wall-sculpture and sepulchral tablets abounded ; and on 
one occasion we were introduced into the presence of — a 
mummy ! 

All these houses were tombs, and in this one the mummy 
was stowed away in a kind of recess at the end of a long rock- 
cut passage ; probably the very place once occupied by the 
original tenant. It was a mummy of the same period as that 
which we saw disentombed under the auspices of the Gov- 
ernor, and was enclosed in the same kind of cartonnage, 
patterned in many colours on a white ground. I shall never 
forget that curious scene — the dark and dusty vault; the 
Arabs with their lanterns ; the mummy in its gaudy cere- 
ments lying on an old mat at our feet. 

Meanwhile we tried in vain to get sight of the coveted 
papyrus. A grave Arab dropped in once or twice after night- 
fall, and talked it over vaguely with the dragoman ; but never 
came to the point. He offered it first, with a mummy, for 
£100. Finding, however, that we would neither buy his 
papyrus unseen nor his mummy at any price, he haggled and 
hesitated for a day or two, evidently trying to play us off 
against some rival or rivals unknown, and then finally dis- 
appeared. These rivals, we afterwards found, were the M. 
B.'s. They bought both mummy and papyrus at an enor- 
mous price ; and then, unable to endure the perfume of their 
ancient Egyptian, drowned the dear departed at the end of a 
week. 

Other purchasers are possibly less sensitive. We heard, 
at all events, of fifteen mummies successfully insinuated 
through the Alexandrian Custom-house by a single agent that 
winter. There is, in fact, a growing passion for mummies 
among Nile travellers. Unfortunately, the prices rise with 

1 The Ancient Egyptians, Sir G. Wilkinson ; vol. i. chap. ii. woodcut 
No. 1)2. Lend. 1871. 



424 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the demand; and altliough tlie mine is practically inexhaust- 
ible, a mummy nowadays becomes not only a prohibited, 
but a costly luxury. 

At Luxor, the British, American, and French Consuls are 
Arabs. The Prussian Consul is a Copt. The Austrian Con- 
sul is, or was, an Amei'ican. The French Consul showed us 
over the old tumble-down building called "The French 
liouse," ^ which, though but a rude structure of palm-timbers 
and sun-dried clay, built partly against and partly over the 
'i'emple of Luxor, has its place in histor}'. For there, in 1829, 
C'hampollion and Rosellini lived and worked together, during 
part of their long sojourn at Thebes, liosellini tells how 
they used to sit up at night, dividing the fruits of the day's 
labour; Champollion copying whatever might be useful for 
his Egyptian grammar, ami Rosellini, the new words that 
furnished material for his dictionary. There, too, lodged the 
naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the 
obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde. And 
there, writing those charming letters that delight the world, 
Lady Duff Gordon lingered through the last few winters of 
her life. The rooms in which she lived first, and the balcony 
in which she took such pleasure, were no longer accessible, 
owing to the ruinous state of one of the staircases ; but we 
saw the rooms she last inhabited. Her couch, her rug. her 
folding chair were there still. The walls were furnished 
with a few cheap prints and a pair of tin sconces. All was 
very bare and comfortless. 

AVe asked if it was just like this when the Sitteh lived 
here. The Arab Consul replied that she had " a table, and 
some books." He looked himself in the last stage of con- 
sumption, and spoke and moved like one that had done with 
life. 

We were shocked at the dreariness of the place — till we 
went to the window. That window, which commanded the 

1 The old French Honss is now swept away, with the rest of the mod- 
ern Ai-ab buildings which encumbered the ruins of the Temple of Luxor 
(see footnote, pp. 143, 144). I sketched it on the spot, and my sketch was 
repro luced as a whole-page illustration for the first edition of this book. 
Although the scene is now completely changed, that plate is re-issued 
with the present edition (see Frontispiece) as a memento of the past, and 
as a fragment of recent liistory. With it, and by way of contrast, I am 
enabled, by the courtesy of the' proprietor of the Illustrated London Neics, 
to give an engraving of part of the colonnade surrounding the sanctuary, 
over which the old French House was built. These particular columns, if 
I am not much mistaken, bounded the west side of the courtyard through 
which one passed to the flight of steps leading up to Lady Duff Gordon's 
rooms. [Note to Second Edition.] 



THEBES. 



425 



Kile and the western plain of Thebes, furnished the room 
and made its poverty splendid. 

The sun was near setting. We could distinguish the 
mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu and the site of the 




COLUMNS OF AMENHOTEP III (LUXOR). 



Ramesseum. The terraced cliffs, overtopped by the pyram- 
idal mountain of Bab-el-Moluk, burned crimson against a 
sky of stainless blue. The footpath leading to. the Valley of 
the Tombs of the Kings shoAved like a hot white scar wind- 
ing along the face of the rocks. The river gave back the sap- 
phire tones of the sky. I thought I could be well content to 



426 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

spend many a winter in no matter how comfortless a lodging, 
if only I had that wonderful view, with its infinite beauty of 
light and colour and space, and its history, and its mystery, 
always before my windows.^ 

Another historical house is that built by Sir G. Wilkinson, 
among tlie tombs of Sheykh Abd-el-Koorneh. Here he lived 
Avhile amassing the materials for his Manners and Customs of 
the Ancient Egyptians; and here Lepsius and his company 
of artists put up while at work on the western bank. Science 
makes little impression on the native mind. No one now 
remembers ChampoUion, or Rosellini, or Sir G, Wilkinson ; 
but every Arab in Luxor cherishes the memor}'^ of Lady Duff 
Gordon in his heart of hearts, and speaks of her with bless- 
ings. 

The French House was built over the roof of the sanctuary, 
at the southern end of the Temple. At the northern end, 
built up between the enormous sandstone columns of the 
Great Colonnade, was the house of Mustapha Aga, most 
hospitable and kindly of British Consuls. Mustapha Aga 
had travelled in Europe, and spoke fluent Italian, English, 
and French. His eldest son was Governor of Luxor; his 
younger — the "little Ahmed" whom Lady Duff Gordon de- 
lighted to educate — having spent two years in England as 
the guest of Lord D., had become an accomplished English- 
man. 

In the round of gaiety that goes on at Luxor the British 
Consulate played the leading part. Mustapha Aga enter- 
tained all the English dahabeeyahs, and all the English 
dahabeeyahs entertained Mustapha Aga. We were invited 
to several fantasias at the Consulate, and dined with Mus- 
tapha Aga at his suburban house the evening before we left 
Luxor. 

The appointed hour was 8.30 p.m. We arrived amid 
much barking of dogs, and were received by our host in a 
large empty hall surrounded by a divan. Here we remained 
till dinner was announced. We were next ushered through 
an anteroom where two turbaned and barefooted servants 
were in waiting ; the one with a brass basin and ewer, the 
other with an armful of Turkish towels. We then, each in 
turn, held our hands over the basin ; had water poured on 
them ; and received a towel apiece. These towels we were 

1 Mehemet Ali gave this house to the French, and to the French it 
belonged till pulled down three years ago by Professor Maspero. [Note 
to Second Edition.] 



THEBES. 427 

told to keep ; and they served for dinner-napkins. The 
auteroom opened into a brilliantly lighted dining-room of 
moderate size, having in the centre a round brass table with 
an upright fluted rim, like a big tray. For each person were 
placed a chair, a huge block of bread, a wooden spoon, two 
tumblers, and a bouquet. Plates, knives, forks, there were 
none. 

The party consisted of the Happy Couple, the Director of 
the Luxor Telegraph Office, L., the Writer, Ahmed, and our 
host. 

•' To-night we are all Arabs," said Mustapha Aga, as he 
showed us where to sit. " We drink Nile water, and we 
eat with our lingers." 

So we drank Nile water ; and for the first time in our lives 
we ate with our fingers. In fact, we found them exceedingly 
useful. 

The dinner was excellent. Without disrespect to our own 
accomplished chef., or to the accomplished chefs of our various 
friends upon the river, I am bound to say that it was the 
very best dinner I ever ate out of Europe. Everything was 
hot, quickly served, admirably dressed, and the best of its 
kind. Here is the menu : — 

MENU. MARCH 31, 1874. 



White soup : — (Turkey). 

FISH. 

Fried Saniak.^ 

ENTRl^ES. 
Stewed pigeons. Spinach and rice. 

ROAST. 
Dall.2 

ENTRIES. 

Kebobs ^ of mutton. Kebobs of lambs' kidneys. 

Tomatoes witli rice. Kuftali.* 

* Samak : a large flat fish, rather like a brill. 

2 Ball : roast shoulder of lamb. 

3 Kebobs : small lumps of meat grilled on skewers. 

* Kiiftah : broiled mutton. 



428 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

ROAST. 

Turkey, with cucumber sauce. 

entr:6e. 

Pilaff ^ of rice. 

SECOND COURSE. 
Mlsh-mish.2 Rus Blebban.* 

Kunafab.3 Totleh.s 

These dishes were placed one at a time in the middle of 
the table, and rapidly changed. Each dipped his own spoon 
in the soup, dived into the stew, and pulled off pieces of fish 
or lamb with his fingers. Having no plates, we made plates 
of our bread. Meanwhile Mustapha Aga, like an attentive 
host, tore off an especially choice morsel now and then, and 
handed it to one or other of his guests. 

To eat gracefully with one's fingers is a fine art ; to carve 
with them skilfully is a science. None of us, I think, will 
soon forget the wonderful way in which our host attacked 
and vanquished the turkey — a solid colossus weighing 
twenty pounds, and roasted to perfection. Half-rising, he 
turned back his cuff, poised his wrist, and, driving his fore- 
linger and thumb deep into the breast, brought out a long, 
stringy, smoking fragment, which he deposited on the plate 
of the Writer. Thus begun, the turkey went round the table 
amid peals of laughter, and was punished by each in turn. 
The pilaff which followed is always the last dish served at 
an Egyptian or Turkish dinner. After this, our spoons were 
changed and the sweets were put upon the table. The 
drinks throughout were plain water, rice-water, and lemonade. 
Some native musicians played in the anteroom during din- 
ner ; and when we rose from the table, we washed our hands 
as before. 

We now returned to the large hall, and not being accom- 
plished in the art and mystery of sitting cross-legged, curled 
ourselves up on the divans as best we could. The Writer 
was conducted by Mustapha Aga to the corner seat at the 

1 Pilaff: boiled rice, mixed with a little hutter, and seasoned with salt 
and pepper. 

2 Mi.ih-mish : apricots (preserved). 

'> Ktindfah: a rich pudding made of rice, almonds, cream, cinnamon, 
etc. etc. 

■• RusBlebhan: rice cream. 

5 Toileh : sweet jelly, encrusted with blanched almonds. 



THEBES, 429 

upper end of the room, where he said the Princess of Wales 
hadsat when their Royal Highnesses dined with him the year 
before. We were theii served with pipes and coffee. The gen- 
tlemen smoked chibouques and cigarettes, while for us tliere 
were gorgeous rose-Avater narghilehs with long flexible tubes 
and amber mouthpieces. L. had the Princess's pipe, and 
smoked it very cleverly all the evening. 

By and by came the Governor, the Kadi of Luxor, the 
Prussian Consul and liis son, and some three or four grave- 
looking merchants in rich silk robes and ample turbans. 
Meanwhile the band — two fiddles, a tambourine, and a dara- 
bukkeh — played at intervals at the lower end of the hall; 
pipes, coffee, and lemonade went continually round ; and the 
entertainment wound up, as native eiitertainmeuts always 
do wind up at Luxor, with a performance of Ghawazi. 

We had already seen these dancers at two previous fan- 
tasias, and we admired them more the third time than the 
first. Tliey wore baggy Turkish trowsers, loose gowns of 
gaudy pattern, and a profusion of jewellery. The, premiere 
danseuse was a fine woman and rather handsome ; but in the 
" belle " of the compau}', a thick-lipped Nubian, we could 
discover no charm whatever. The performances of the 
Ghawazi — which are very ungraceful and almost wholly 
pantomimic — have been too often described to need de- 
scription here. Only once, indeed, did we see them per- 
form an actual dance ; and then they swam lightly to and 
fro, clattering their castanets, crossing and re-crossing, and 
bounding every now and then down the whole length of the 
room. This dance, we were told, was of unknown antiquity. 
They sang occasionally ; but their voices were harsh and 
their melodies inharmonious. 

There was present, however, one native performer whom 
we had already heard many times, and of whose skill we 
never tired. This was the leader of the little band — an 
old man who played the Kemengeh,^ or cocoa-nut fiddle. A 
more unpromising instrument than the Kemengeh it would 
be difficult to conceive ; yet our old Arab contrived to make 
it discourse most eloquent music. His solos consisted of 
plaintive airs and extemporised variations, embroidered with 
difficult, and sometimes extravagant, cadenzas. He always 

1 The kemengeh is a kind of small two-stringe.l fiddle, the body of which 
is made of half a cocoa-nut shell. It has a very long neck, and a long foot 
that rests upon the ground, like the foot of a violoncello ; and it is played 
with a bow about a yard in length. The strings are of twisted horsehair. 



430 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

began sedately, but warmed to his work as he went on ; seem- 
ing at last to forget everything but his own delight in his 
own music. At such times one could see that he was weav- 
ing some romance in his thoughts, and translating it into 
sounds. As the strings throbbed under his lingers, the 
whole man became inspired ; and more than once when, in 
shower after shower of keen despairing notes, he had described 
the wildest anguish of passion, I have observed his colour 
change and his hand tremble. 

Although we heard him repeatedly, and engaged him more 
than once when we had friends to dinner, I am sorry to say 
that I forget the name of this really great artist. He is, how- 
ever, celebrated throughout the Thebaid, and is constantly 
summoned to Erment, Esneh, Keneh, Girgeh, and other large 
to^vns, to perform at private entertainments. 

While at Luxor, we went one Sunday morning to the 
Coptic church — a large building at the northern extremity 
of the village. Church, schools, and Bishop's house, are 
here grouped under one roof and enclosed in a courtyard ; 
for Luxor is the centre of one of the twelve sees into which 
Coptic Egypt is divided. 

The church, which has been rebuilt of late years, is con- 
structed of sun-dried brick, having a small apse towards the 
east, and at the lower or western end a screened atrium for 
the women. The centre aisle is perhaps thirty feet in width ; 
the side-aisles, if aisles they can be called, being thickly 
planted with stone pillars supporting round arches. These 
pillars came from Karnak, and were the gift of the Khedive. 
They have lotus-bud capitals, and measure about fifteen feet 
high in the shaft. At the upper end of the nave, some 
eighteen or twenty feet in advance of the apse., there stands 
a very beautiful screen inlaid in the old Coptic style with 
cedar, ebony, rosewood, ivory, and mother-of-pearl. This 
screen is the pride of the church. Through the opening in 
the centre, one looks straight into the little waggon-roofed 
apse, which contains a small table and a suspended lamp, 
and is as dark as the sanctuary of an Egyptian temple. The 
reading-desk, like a rickety office stool, faces the congrega- 
tion ; and just inside the screen stands the Bishop's chair. 
Upon this plan, which closely resembles the plan of the first 
cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, most Coptic churches are 
built. They vary chiefly in the number of apses, some hav- 
ing as many as five. The atrium generally contains a large 
tank, called the Epiphany tank, into which, in memory of the 



THEBES. ' 431 

baptism of our Lord, the men plunge at their festival of El 
Gliitas. 

Young Todroos, the son of the Prussian Consul, conducted 
us to the church. We went in at about eleven o'clock and wit- 
nessed the end of the service, which had then been going on 
since daybreak. The atrium was crowded with women and 
children, and the side-aisles with men of the poorer sort. A 
few groups of better dressed Copts were gathered near the 
screen listening to a black-robed deacon, who stood reading 
at the readiug-desk with a lighted taper in his left hand. A 
priest in a white vestment embroidered on the breast and hood 
with a red Maltese cross, was squatting on his heels at the 
entrance to the adytum. The Bishop, all in black with a black 
turban, sat with his back to the congregation. 

Every face was turned upon us when we came in. The 
reader paused. The white-robed priest got up. Even the 
Bishop looked round. Presently a couple of acolytes, each 
carrying two cane-bottomed chairs, came bustling down tlie 
nave ; aud, unceremoniously driving away all who were stand- 
ing near, placed us in a row across the middle of the church. 
This interruption over, the reading was resumed. 

We now observed with some surprise that every word of 
the lessons as they were read in Coptic was translated, viva 
voce, into Arabic by a youth in a surplice, who stood against 
the screen facing the congregation. He had no book, but 
went on fluently enough, following close upon the voice of 
the reader. This, we were told, was done only during the 
reading of the lessons, the Gospel, and the Lord's Prayer. 
The rest of the service is performed without translation ; and, 
the Coptic being a dead language, is consequently unintelli- 
gible to the people. 

AVhen the reading of the Gospel was over, the deacon re- 
tired. The priest then came forward and made a sign to the 
school children, who ran up noisily from all parts of the 
church, and joined with the choristers in a wild kind of 
chant. It seemed to us that this chant concluded the first 
part of the service. 

The second part closely resembled the celebration of mass. 
The priest came to the door of the screen ; looked at the 
congregation ; foUled his hands palm to palm ; went up to 
the threshold of the apse, and began reciting what sounded 
like a litany. He then uncovered the sacred vessels, which 
till now had been concealed under two blue cotton handker- 
chiefs, and, turning, shook the handkerchiefs towards the 



432 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

people. He then consecrated the wine and wafer ; elevated 
the host ; and himself partook of the Eucharist in both ele- 
ments. A little bell was rung during the consecration and 
again at the elevation. The people, meanwhile, stood very 
reverently, with their heads bent ; but no one knelt during 
any part of the service. After this, the officiating priest 
washed his hands in a brass basin ; and the deacon — who 
was also the schoolmaster — came round the church holding 
up his scarf, which was heaped full of little cakes of un- 
leavened bread. These he distributed to all present. An 
acolyte followed with a plate, and collected the offerings of 
the congregation. 

We now thought the service was over ; but there remained 
four wee, crumpled, brown mites of babies to be christened. 
These small Copts were carried up to the church by four 
acolytes, followed by four anxious fathers. The priests then 
muttered a short prayer ; crossed the babies with water from 
the basin in which he had washed his hands ; drank the 
water ; wiped the basin out with a piece of bread ; ate the 
bread ; and dismissed the little newly made Christians with 
a hasty blessing. 

Finally, the Bishop — who had taken no part in the ser- 
vice, nor even partaken of the Eucharist — came down from 
his chair, and stood before the altar to bless the congregation. 
Hereupon all the men and boys ranged themselves in single 
file and trooped through between the screen and the apse, 
crowding in at one side and out at the other ; each being 
touched by the Bishop on his cheek, as he went by. If they 
lagged, the Bishop clapped his hands impatiently, and the 
schoolmaster drove them through faster. When there were 
no more to come (the women and little girls, be it observed, 
coming in for no share of this benediction), the priest took off 
liis vestments and laid them in a heap on the altar ; the deacon 
distributed a basketful of blessed cakes among the poor of 
the congregation ; and the Bishop walked down the nave, eat- 
ing a cake and giving a bit here and there to the best dressed 
Copts as he went along. So ended this interesting and curious 
service, which I have described thus minutely for the reason 
that it represents, with probably but little change, the earliest 
ceremonial of Christian worship in Egypt.-' 

1 " The Copts are Christians of the sect called Jacobites, Eutychians, 
Monophysites, and Monothelites, whose creed was condemned by the 
Council of Chalcedon in the reign of the Emperor Marcian. They received 
the appellation of ' Jacobites,' by which they are generally known, from 



THEBES. 433 

Before leaving, we asked permission to look at the books 
from which the service had been read. They wtre all very old 
and dilapidated. The New Testament, however, was in better 
condition than the rest, and was beautifully written upon 
vellum, in red and black ink. The Coptic, of course, looks 
like Greek to the eyes of the uninitiated ; but some of the 
illuminated capitals struck us as bearing a marked resem- 
blance to certain of the more familiar hieroglyphic charac- 
ters. 

While we were examining the books, the Bishop sent his 
servant to invite us to pay him a visit. We accordingly 
followed the man up an outer flight of wooden steps at one 
corner of the courtyard, and were shown into a large room 
built partly over the church. Here we fonnd the Bishop — 
handsome, plump, dignified, with soft brown eyes, and a 
slightly grizzled beard — seated cross-legged on a divan, and 
smoking his chibouque. On a table in the middle of the 
room stood two or three blue and white bottles of Oriental 
porcelain. The windows, which were sashless and very large, 
) coked over to Karnak. The sparrows flew in and out as 
they listed. 

The Bishop received us very amiably, and the proceedings 
opened as usual with pipes and coffee. The conversation 
which followed consisted chiefly of questions on our part, 
and of answers on his. We asked the extent of his diocese, 
and learned that it reached from Assuan on the south to 
Keneh on the north. The revenue of the see, he said, was 
wholly derived from endowments in land. He estimated 
the number of Copts in Luxor at 2,000, being two-thirds of 
the entire population. The church was built and decorated 
in the time of his predecessor. He had himself been Bishop 
here for rather more than four years. We then spoke of the 
service we had just witnessed, and of the books we had 
seen. I showed him my prayer-book, which he examined 
with much curiosity. I explained the differences indicated 
by the black and the rubricated matter, and pointed out the 
parts that were sung. He was, however, more interested in 
the outside than in the contents, and tapped the binding once 
or twice, to see if it were leather or wood. As for the gilt 
corners and clasp, he undoubtedly took them for solid gold. 

Jacobus Baradseus, a Syrian, who was a chief propagator of the Eutychian 
doctrines. . . . The religious orders of the Coptic Church consist of a 
patriarch, a metropolitan of the Abyssinians, bishops, arch-priests, priests, 
deacons, and monks. In Abyssinia, Jacobite Christianity is still the pre- 
vailing religion." See The Modern Egyptians, by E. W. Lank. Supple- 
ment 1, p. 531. London: 1860. 



434 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

The conversation next turned upon Coptic ; the Idle Man 
asking him if he believed it to be the tongue actually spoken 
by the ancient Egyptians. 

To this he replied : — 

" Yes, undoubtedly. What else should it be ? " 

The Idle Man hereupon suggested that it seemed to him, 
from what he had just seen of the church books, as if it 
might be a corrupt form of Byzantine Greek. 

The Bishop shook his head. 

" The Coptic is a distinct language," he said. " Eight 
Greek letters were added to the Coptic alphabet upon the 
introduction of Christianity into Egypt ; and since that time 
many Greek words have been imported into the Coptic 
vocabulary ; but the main body of the tongue is Coptic, 
purely ; and it has no radical affinity whatever with the 
Greek." ' 

This was the longest speech we heard him make, and he 
delivered it with some emphasis. 

I then asked him if the Coptic was in all respects a dead 
language; to which he replied that many Coptic words, such as 
the names of the months and of certain festivals, were still 

1 The Bishop was for the most part right. Tin Coptic is the ancient 
Egyptian language (tliat is to say, it is late anl so.njw'aat corrupt Egyp- 
tian) written in G-reek characters instead of in hieroglyphs. For the abo- 
lition of the ancient writing was, next to the abolition of the images of 
the Gods, one of the first great objects of the early Church in Egypt. 
Unable to uproot and destroy the language of a great nation, the Christian 
Fathers toak care so to reclothe it that every trace of the old symbolism 
should disappear and be forgotten. Already, in the time of Clement of 
Alexandria (a.d. 211), the hieroglyphic style had become obsolete. The 
secret of reading hieroglyphs, however, was not lost till the time of the 
fall of the Eastern Empire. How the lost key was recovered by Cham- 
pollion is told in a quotation from Mariette Bey, in the footnote to p. 205, 
chapter xii. of this book. Of the relation of Coptic to Egyptian, Cham- 
pollion says: "La langue egyptienne antique ne differait en rien de la 
langue appelee vulgairement Copte ou Cophte. . . . Les mots egyptiens 
ecrits en caracteres hieroglypliiques sur les monuments les plus anciens 
de Thebes, et en caracteres Grecs dans les livres Coptes, ne different en 
general que par I'absence de certaines voyelles mediales omises, selon la 
methode orientale, dans I'orthographe primitive." — Gram j?iaire Egyp- 
tienne, p. 18. 

Tlie Bishop, though perfectly right in stating that Coptic and Egyptian 
were one, and that the Coptic was a distinct language having no affinity 
with the Greek, was, however, entirely wrong in that part of his explana- 
nation which related to the alphabet. So far from eight Greek letters 
having been added to the Coptic alphabet upon tVie introduction of Chris- 
tianity into Egypt, there was no such thing as a Coptic alphabet previous 
to that time. The Coptic alphabet is the Greek alphabet as imposed upon 
Egypt by the Fathers of the early Greek Church ; and that alphabet being 
found insufficient to convey all the sounds of the Egyptian tongue, eight 
new characters were borrowed from the demotic to supplement the defi- 
ciency. 



THEBES. 435 

in daily use. This, however, was not quite what I meant; 
so I put the question in another form, and asked if he 
thought any fragments of the tongue yet survived among 
the peasantry. 

He pondered a moment before replying. 

" That," he said, " is a question to which it is difficult to 
give a precise answer, but I think you might yet find, in 
some of the remoter villages, an old man here and there who 
would understand it a little." 

I thought this a very interesting reply to a very interesting 
question. 

After sitting about half an hour we rose and took leave. 
The Bishop shook hands with us all round, and, but that we 
protested against it, would liave accompanied us to the head 
of the stairs. 

This interview was altogether very pleasant. The Copts 
are said to be sullen in manner, and so bigoted that even a 
Moslem is less an object of dislike to them than a Christian 
of any other denomination. However this may be, we saw 
nothing of it. We experienced, on the contrary, many acts 
of civility from the Copts with whom we were brought into 
communication. No traveller in Egypt should, I think, omit 
being present at a service in a Coptic church. For a Coptic 
church is now the only place in which one may hear the last 
utterances of that far-off race with whose pursuits and pleas- 
ures the tomb-paintings made us so familiar. We know 
that great changes have come over the language since it was 
spoken by Rameses the Great and written by Pentaur. We 
know that the Coptic of to-day bears to the Egyptian of the 
Pharaohs some such resemblance, perhaps, as the English of 
Macaulay bears to the English of Chaucer. Yet it is at bot- 
tom the tongue of old Egypt, and it is something to hear the 
1 ist lingering echoes of the ancient speech read by the un- 
doubted descendants of the Egyptian people. In another 
fifty yeffrs or so, the Coptic will in all probability be super- 
seded by the Arabic in. the services of this Church; and then 
the very tradition of its pronunciation will be lost. The 
Copts themselves, it is said, are fast going over to tlie domi- 
nant faith. Perhaps by the time our own descendants are 
counting the two thousandth anniversary of the Christian 
era, both Copts and Coptic will be extinct in Egypt. 

A day or two after this we dropped down to Karnak, where 
we remained till the end of the week, and on the following 
Sunday we resumed our downward voyage. 



436 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

If the universe of literature was unconditioned, and the 
present book was independent of time and space, I would 
write another chapter here about Karnak. But Karnak, to 
be fairly dealt by, would ask, not a chapter, but a volume. 
So, having already told something of the impressions first 
made upon us by that wilderness of wonders, I will say no 
more. 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 437 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 

Our last weeks on the Nile went like one long, lazy sum- 
mer's day. Events now were few. We had out-stayed all 
our fellow-travellers. Even the faithful Bagstones had long 
since vanished northwards ; and the Philse Avas the last daha- 
beeyah of the year. Of the great sights of the river, we had 
only Abydos and Beni Hassan left to see ; while for minor 
excursions, daily walks, and explorations by the way, Ave had 
little energy left. For the thermometer was rising higher 
and the Nile was falling lower every day ; and we should 
have been more than mortal, if we had not felt the languid 
influences of the glowing Egyptian Spring. 

The natives call it spring ; but to our northern fancy it is 
spring, summer, and autumn in one. Of the splendour of the 
skies, of the lavish bounty of the soil at this season, only 
those Avho have lingered late in the land can form any con- 
ception. There is a breadth of repose now about the land- 
scape which it has never worn before. The winter green of 
the palms is fading fast. The harvests are ripening; the 
pigeons are pairing ; the time of the singing of birds is come. 
There is just enough south wind most days to keep the boat 
straight, and the sails from flapping. The heat is great ; 
yet it is a heat which, up to a certain point, one can enjoy. 
The men ply their oars by niglit ; and sleep under their 
benches, or croon old songs and tell stories among themselves, 
by day. But for the thin canopy of smoke that hangs over 
the villages, one would fancy now that those clusters of mud- 
huts were all deserted. Not a human being is to be seen on 
the banks when the sun is high. The buffaloes stand up to 
their necks in the shallows. The donkeys huddle together 
wherever there is shade. The very dogs have given up bark- 
ing, and lie asleep under the walls. 

The whole face of the country, and even of the Nile, is 
wonderfully changed since we first passed this way. The 



438 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

land, then newly squared off like a gigantic chess-board and 
intersected by thousands of little channels, is now one sea 
of yellowing grain. The river is become a labyrinth of sand- 
banks, some large, some small ; some just beginning to thrust 
tlieir heads above water; others so long that they divide the 
river for a mile or more at a stretch. Reis Hassan spends 
half his life at the prow, polling for shallows ; and when we 
thread our way down one of these sandy straits, it is for all 
tlie world like a bit of the Suez Canal. The banks, too, are 
twice as steep as they were when we went up. The lentil 
patches, which then blossomed on the slopes next the water's 
edge, now lie far back on the top of a steep brown ridge, 
at the foot of which stretches a moist flat planted with 
water-melons. Each melon-plant is protected from the sun 
by a tiny gable-roof of palm-thatch. 

Meanwhile, the river being low and the banks high, we 
unfortunates benefit scarcely at all by the faint breezes that 
now and then ruffle the barley. Day by day, the thermome- 
ter (which hangs in the coolest corner of the saloon) creeps 
up higher and higher, working its way by degrees to above 
99° ; but never succeeding in getting up quite to 100°. We, 
liowever, living in semi-darkness, with closed jalousies, and 
wet sails hung round the sides of the dahabeeyah, and wet 
towels hung up in our cabins, find 99° quite warm enough 
to be pleasant. The upper deck is of course well deluged 
several times a day ; but even so, it is difficult to keep tlie 
timbers from starting. Meanwhile L. and the Idle Man 
devote their leisure to killing flies, keeping the towels wet, 
and sprinkling the floors. 

Our progress all this time is of the slowest. The men 
cannot row by day ; and at night the sandbanks so hedge us 
in with dangers, that the only possible way by which we can 
make a few miles between sunset and sunrise is by sheer 
hard punting. Now and tlien we come to a clear channel, 
and sometimes we get an hour or two of sweet south breeze ; 
but these flashes of good luck are few and far between. 

In such wise, and in such a temperature, we found our- 
selves becalmed one morning within six miles of Denderah. 
Not even L. could be induced to take a six-mile donkey-ride 
that day in the sun. The Writer, however, ordered out her 
sketching-tent and paid a last visit to the Temple ; which, 
seen among the ripening splendour of miles of barley, looked 
gloomier, and grander, and more solitary than ever. 

Two or three days later, we came within reach of Abydos. 



A B YD OS AND CAIRO. 439 

Our proper course would have been to push on to Bellianeh, 
-which is one of the recognised starting-points for Abydos. 
But an unlucky sandbank barred the way ; so we moored 
instead at Samata, a village about two miles nearer to the 
southward. Here our dragoman requisitioned the inhabitants 
for donkeys. As it happened, the harvest had begun in the 
neighbourhood and all the beasts of burden were at work, so 
that it was near midday before we succeeded in getting 
together the three or four wretched little brutes with which 
we finally started. Not one of these steeds had ever before 
carried a rider. We had a frightful time with them. My 
donkey bolted about every live minutes. L.'s snarled like 
a camel and showed its teeth like a dog. The Idle Man's, 
bent on flattening its rider, lay down and rolled at short 
intervals. In this exciting fashion, we someliow or another 
accomplished the seven miles that separate Samata from 
Abydos. 

Skirting some palm-groves and crossing the dry bed of a 
canal, we came out upon a vast plain, level as a lake, islanded 
here and there with villages, and presenting one undulating 
surface of bearded corn. This plain — the plain of ancient 
Thinis — runs parallel with the Nile, like the plain of Thebes, 
and is bounded to the w^estward by a range of flat-topped 
mountains. The distance between the river and the moun- 
tains, however, is here much greater than at Thebes, being 
full six miles ; while to north and south the view ends only 
with the horizon. 

Our way lies at first by a bridle-track through the thick 
of the barley ; then falls into the Bellianeh road — a raised 
causeway embanked some twenty feet above the plain. Along 
this road, the countryfolk are coming and going. In the cleared 
spaces where the maize has been cut, little encampments of 
straw huts have sprung up. Yonder, steering their way by 
unseen paths, go strings of camels ; their gawky necks and 
humped backs undulating above the surface of the corn, like 
galleys with fantastic prows upon a sea of rippling green. 
The pigeons fly in great clouds from village to village. The 
larks are singing and circling madly in the clear depths 
overhead. The bee-eaters flash like live emeralds across our 
path. The hoopoes strut by the wayside. At rather more 
than half-way across the plain, we come into the midst of 
-the harvest. Here the brown reapers, barelegged and naked 
to the waist, are at work with their sickles, just as they are 
pictured in the tomb of Till, The women and children fol- 



440 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

low, gleaning, at the heels of those who bind the sheaves. 
The Slieykh in his black robe and scarlet slippers rides 
to and fro upon his ass, like Boaz among his people. 
As the sheaves are bound up, the camels carry them home- 
ward. A camel-load is fourteen sheaves ; seven to each 
side of the hump. A little farther, and the oxen, yoked 
two and two, are ploughing up the stubble. In a day 
or two, the land will be sown with millet, indigo, or cot- 
ton, to be gathered in once more before the coming of the 
inundation. 

Meanwhile, as the plain lengthens behind us and the 
distance grows less between ourselves and the mountains, we 
see a line of huge irregular mounds reaching for apparently 
a couple of miles or more along the foot of the cliffs. From 
afar off, the mounds look as if crowned by majestic ruins ; 
but as we draw nearer, these outlines resolve themselves into 
the village of Arabat-el-Madfuueh, which stands upon part 
of the mounds of Abydos. And now we come to the end of 
the cultivated plain — that strange line of demarcation where 
the inundation stops and the desert begins. Of actual desert, 
however, there is here but a narrow strip, forming a first 
step, as it were, above the alluvial plain. Next comes the 
artificial platform, about a quarter of a mile in depth, ou 
which stands the modern village ; and next again, towering 
up sheer and steep, the great wall of limestone precipice. 
The village is extensive, and the houses, built in a rustic 
Arabesque, tell of a well-to-do population. Arched gateways 
ornamented with black, white, and red bricks, windows of 
turned lattice-work, and pigion-towers in courses of pots 
and bricks, give a singular picturesqueness to the place; 
while the slope down to the desert is covered with shrub- 
beries and palms. Below these hanging gardens, on the 
edge of the desert, lies the cut corn in piles of sheaves. 
Here the camels are lying down to be unladen. Yonder the 
oxen are already treading out the grain, or chopping the 
f.traw by means of a curious sledge-like machine set with re- 
volving rows of circular knives./ Meanwhile, fluttering from 
heap to heap, settling on the sheaves, feeding unmolested in 
the very midst of the threshing floors, strutting all over the 
margin of the desert, trailing their wings, ruffling their 
plumes, cooing, curtseying, kissing, courting, filling the air 
with sweet sounds and setting the whole lovely idyll to a 

1 This machine is called the Noreg. 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 441 

pastoral symphony of their own composing, are thousands 
and tens of thousands of pigeons. ^ 

Now our path turns aside and we thread our way among 
the houses, noticing liere a sculptured block built into a mud 
wall — yonder, beside a dried-up well, a broken alabaster 
sarcophagus — farther on, a granite column still erect, in the 
midst of a palm-garden. And now, the village being left 
behind, we find ourselves at the foot of a great hill of newly 
excavated rubbish, from the top of which we presently look 
down into a kind of crater, and see the Great Temple of 
Abydos at our feet. 

It was uow nearly three o'clock ; so, having seen what we 
could in the time, and having before us a long ride through a 
strange country, we left again at six. I will not presume to 
describe the Temples of Abydos — one of which is so ruined 
as to be almost unintelligible, and the other so singularly 
planned and so obscure in its general purport, as to be a 
standing puzzle to archaeologists — after a short visit of 
three hours. Enough if I sketch briefly what I saw but 
cursorily. 

Buried as it is, Abydos,^ even under its mounds, is a 
place of profound historical interest. At a time so remote 
that it precedes all written record of Egyptian story, there 
existed a little way to the northward of this site a city 
called Teni.^ We know not to what aboriginal community 
of prehistoric Egypt this city belonged ] but here, pre- 

1 The number of pigeons kept by the Egyptian fellahin is incredible, 
Mr. Zincke says on this snbject that " the number of domestic pigeons in 
Egypt must be several times as great as the population," and suggests that 
if the people kept pigs, they would keep less pigeons. But it is not as 
food chiefly that the pigeons are encouraged. They are bred and let live 
in such ruinous numbers for the sake of the manure they deposit on the 
land. M. About has forcibly demonstrated the error of this calculation. 
He shows that the pigeons do thirty million francs' worth of damage to the 
crops in excess of any benefit they may confer upon the soil. 

2 The Arabic name of the modern village, Arabat-el-Madfuneh, means 
literally Arabat the Buried. 

3 T'en.i, or more probably Tini, called by the Greeks This or Thinis. It 
was the capital of the Vlllth Nome. " Quoique nous ayoiis tres-peu de 
chose a rapporter sur I'histoire de la ville de Teni qui a la basse epoque 
sous la domination romaine, n'etait connue que par ses teinturiers en 
pourpre, elle doit avoir joui d'une trcs grande renommee chez les anciens 
Egyptiens. Encore au temps du XIX'™" dynastie les plus hauts fonction- 
naires de sang royal etaient distingues par le titre de ' Princes de Teni.' " 
— Hist. d^Ef/ypte. Brugsch, vol. i. chap. v. p. 29; Leipzig, 1874, 

Note to Second Edition. — " Des monuments trouve's il y a deux ans, 
me portent a croire que Thini etait situc'e assez loin a I'Est au village 
actuel de Aoulad-Yahia." Letter of Prof. G. Maspero to the author, April 
1878. 



442 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

sumedly, the men of Kem ^ built their first Temple, evolved 
their first notions of art, and groped their way to an alpha- 
bet which in its origin was probably a mere picture-writing, 
like the picture-writing of Mexico. Hence, too, came a man 
named Mena, whose cartouche from immemorial time has 
stood first in the long list of Egyptian Pharaohs. Of 
Mena,2 a shadowy figure hovering on the border-land of his- 
tory and tradition, we know only that he was the first prim- 
itive chieftain who took the title of King of Upper and 
Lower Egypt, and that he went northward and founded 
Memphis, Not, however, till after some centuries was the 
seat of government removed to the new city. Teni — the 
supposed burial-place of Osiris — then lost its political 
importance; but continued to be for long ages the Holy 
City of Egypt. 

In the meanwhile, Abydos had sprung up close to Teni. 
Abydos, however, though an important city, was never the 
capital of Egypt. The seat of power shifted strangely with 
different dynasties, being established now in the Delta, now 
at Thebes, now at Elephantine ; but having once departed 
from the site which, by reason of its central position and 
the unbounded fertility of its neighbourhood, was above all 
others best fitted to play this great pait in the history of 
the country, it never again returned to the point from which 
it had started. That point, however, was unquestionably 
the centre from wliich the great Egyptian people departed 
upon its wonderful career. Here was the nursery of its 
strength. Hence it derived its proud title to an unmixed 
autochthonous descent. For no greater proof of the native 
origin of the race can be adduced than the position which 
their first city occupies upon the map of Egypt. That any 
tribe of colonists should have made straight for the heart of 
the country and there have established themselves in the 
midst of barbarous and probably hostile aborigines, is evi- 

1 The ancient name of Egypt was Kem, Khem, or I{nm, signifying 
Black, or the Black Land ; in allusion to the colour of the soil. 

2 " Mena, tel que nous le presente la tradition, est le type le plus complet 
<la monarque egyptien. II est a la foisconstructeur et le'gislateur : il fonde 
If! grande temple de Phtah a Memphis et regie le culte des dieux. II est 
guerrier, et conduit les expeditions hors de ses frontieres." — Hist. Ancienne 
des Pevples de V Orient. G. Maspero. Chap. ii. p. 55: Paris, 1876. 

"N'oublions pas qu'avant Menes I'Egypte etait divisee en petits 
royaumes independants que Menes reunit le premier sous un sceptre unique. 
II n'ost pas impossible que des monuments de cette antique periode de 
I'histoire Egyptienue subsistent Qrxcove." —Itin^raire de la Haute Efpjpte. 
A. Mariett'e Bry. Avant Piopos, p. 40. Alexandrie, 1872. 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 443 

dently out of the question. It is, on the other hand, equally 
clear that if Egypt had been colonised from Asia or Ethio- 
pia, the strangers Avould on the one hand have founded their 
earliest settlement in the neighbourhood of the Isthmus ; or 
on the other, have halted first among the then well-watered 
plains of Nubia.-' But the Egyptians started from the fer- 
tile heart of their own mother country, and began by being 
great at home. 

Abydos and Teni, planted on the same platform of desert, 
were probably united at one time by a straggling suburb in- 
habited by the embalmers and other tradesfolk concerned in 
the business of death and burial. A chain of mounds, ex- 
cavated only where the Temples were situated, now stands 
to us for the famous city of Abydos. An ancient crude- 
brick enclosure and an artificial tumulus mark the site of 
Teni. The Temples and the tumulus, divided by the now 
exhausted necropolis, are about as distant from one another 
as Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum. 

There must have been many older Temples at Abydos 
than these which we now see, one of which was built by 
83ti I, and the other by Rameses II. Or possibly, as in so 
many instances, the more ancient buildings were pulled 
down and rebuilt. Be this as it may, the Temple of Seti, as 
regards its sculptured decorations, is one of the most beauti- 
ful of Egyptian ruins ; and as regards its plan, is one of the 
most singular. A row of square limestone piers, which 
must once have supported an architrave, are now all that 
remains of the facade. Immediately behind these comes a 
portico of twenty-four columns leading by seven entrances 
to a hall of thirty-six columns. This hall again opens into 
seven parallel sanctuaries, behind which lie another hall 
of columns and a number of small chambers. So much of 
the building seems to be liomogeneous. Adjoining this 
block, however, and leading from it by doorways at the 
southern end of the great hall, come several more halls and 
chambers connected by corridors, and conducting apparently 
to more clianibers not yet excavated. All these piers, col- 
umns, halls, and passages, and all the seven sanctuaries,^ 
are most delicately sculptured and brilliantly coloured. 

1 See Opening Address of Professor R. Owen, C.B., etc. etc., Rrpo7-t of 
Froceediiigtiof the Second Interiiatioiial Conr/ress of Orientalists, Ethnologi- 
cal Section : London, 1874. Also a paper on ' ' TheEthnology of Egypt, "by 
the same, published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. iv. 
No. 1, p. 246: Lond. 1874. " 

2 M. Mariette, in his great \York on the excavations at Abydos, 



444 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

There is so far a family resemblance between Temples of 
the same style and period, that after a little experience one 
can generally guess before crossing the threshold of a fresh 
building, what one is likely to see in the way of sculptures 
witliin. But almost every subject in the Temple of Seti at 
Abydos is new and strange. All the Gods of the Egyptian 
pantheon seem to have been worshipped here, and to have 
had each his separate shrine. The walls are covered with 
paintings of these shrines and their occupants ; while before 
each the King is represented performing some act of adora- 
tion. A huge blue frog, a greyhound, a double-headed 
goose, a human-bodied creature with a Nilometer for its 
head,^ and many more than I can now remember, are thus 
depicted. The royal offerings, too, though incense and 
necklaces, and pectoral ornaments abound, are for the most 

observes that these seven vaulted sanctuaries resemble sarcophagi of the 
form most commonly in use; namely, oblong boxes with vaulted lids. 
Two sarcophagi of this shape are shown in cut 496 of Sir G. Wilkinson's 
second volume (see figures 1 and 6), A Popular Accoimt of the Ancient 
Egyptians, vol. ii. chap. x. ; Lond. 1871. Of the uses and purport of the 
temple, he also says — " Wliat do we know of the idee mh'e that presided 
at its construction ? What was done in it ? Is it consecrated to a single 
divinity, who would be Osiris ; or to seven Gods, who would be the Seven 
Gods of the seven vaulted chambers ; or to the nine divinities enumerated 
in the lists of deities dispersed in various parts of the temple? . . . One 
leaves the temple in despair, not at being unable to make out its secret 
from the inscriptions, but on finding that its secret has been kept for 
itself alone, and not trusted to the inscriptions." — Description des Pouilles 
d'Ahvdos. Mariette Bey. Paris, 1869. 

" Les sept chambres voiitees du grand temple d'Abydos sont relatifs 
aux ceremonies que le roi devait y celebrer successivement. Le roi se 
presentait au cote droit de la porte, parcourait la salle dans tout son 
pourtour et sortait par le cote gauche. Des statues etaient disposees dans 
la chambi'e. Le roi ouvrait la porte ou naos ou elles etaient enfermees. 
Desque lastatue apparaissait a ses yeux il lui offrait I'encens, il enlevait 
le vetement qui la couvrait, il lui imposait les mains, il la parfumait, il la 
recouvrait de son vetement," etc. etc. — Mariette Bey. Itin^raii^e de 
la TJnvte Er/ypte : Avant Propos, p. 62. Alex. 1872. 

There is at the upper end of each of these seven sanctuaries a singular 
kind of false door, or recess, conceived in a style of ornament more Indian 
than Egyptian, the ciitting being curiously square, deep, and massive, the 
surface of the relief-work flattened, and the whole evidently intended to 
produce its effect by depths of shadow in the incised portions rather than 
by sculpturesque relief. These recesses, or imitation doors, may have 
been designed to serve as backgrounds to statues, but are not deep enough 
for niches. There is a precisely similar recess sculptured on one of the 
walls of the westernmost chamber in the Temple of Gournah. 

1 These are all representations of minor Gods commonly figured in the 
funereal papyri, but very rarely seen in the Temple sculptvires. The frog 
Gorldess, for instance, is Hek, and symbolises eternity. She is a very 
ancient divinity, traces of her being found in monuments of the Vth 
Dynasty. The goose-headed God is Seb, another very old God. The 
object called the Nilometer was a religious emblem signifying stability, 
and probably stands in this connection as only a deified symbol. 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 445 

part of a kind that we liave not seen before. In one place 
tlie King presents to Isis a column witii four capitals, hav- 
ing on the top capital a globe and two asps surmounted by a 
pair of ostrich feathers. 

The centre sanctuary of the seven appears to be dedicated 
to Kheni, who seems to be here, as in the great Temple of Seti 
at Karnak, the presiding divinity. In this principal sanctu- 
ary, which is resplendent with colour and in marvellous pres- 
ervation, we especially observed a portrait of Rameses II ^ 
in the act of opening the door of a shrine by means of a 
golden key formed like a human hand and arm. The lock 
seems to consist of a number of bolts of unequal length, each 
of which is pushed back in turn by means of the forefinger 
of the little hand. This, doubtless, gives a correct represen- 
tation of the kind of locks in use at that time. 

It was in a corridor opening out from the great hall in this 
Temple that Mariette discovered that precious sculpture 
known as the New Tablet of Abydos. In this tableau, Seti 
I and Eameses II are seen, the one offering incense, the other 
reciting a hymn of praise, to the manes of seventy-six Pha- 
raohs,'-^ beginning with Mena, and ending with Seti himself. 
To our great disappointment — though one cannot but acqui- 
esce in the necessity for precaution — we fonnd the entrance 
to this corridor closed and mounded up. A ragged old Arab 
who haunts the Temple in the character of custode, told us 
that the tablet could now only be seen by special permission. 

We seemed to have been here about half an hour when the 
guide came to warn us of approaching evening. We had yet 
the site and the great Tumulus of Teni to see ; the tumulus 

1 Rameses IT is here shown with the side-lock of youth. This Temple, 
founded by Seti I, was carried on through the time when Rameses the 
prince was associated with his father upon the throne, and was completed 
by Rameses the King, after the death ef Seti I. The building is strictly 
coeval in date and parallel in style with the Temple of Gournah and the 
Speos of Bayt-el-Welly. 

■2 These seventy-six Pharaohs (represented by their cartouches) were 
probably either princes born of families originally from Abydos, or were 
sovereigns who had acquired a special title to veneration at this place on 
account of monuments or pious foundations presented by them to the holy 
city. A similar tablet, erected apparently on the same principles though 
not altogether to the same kings, was placed by Thothmes III in a side 
chamber of the Great Temple at Karnak, and is now in the Louvre. 

The great value of the present monument consists in its chronological 
arrangement. It is also of most beautiful execution, and in perfect pres- 
ervation. " Comme perfection de gravure, comme conservation, comme 
etendue, il est peu de monvimentsqui la depassent." See La Notivelle 
Table cV Abydos, par A. Mariette Bey: Recue Arch. vol. vii. Nouvelle 
Serie, p. 98. This volume of the Review also contains an engraving in 
outline of the Tablet. 



446 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

being distant about twenty minutes' ride. The guide shook 
his head; but we insisted on going. The afternoon had 
darkened over ; and for tlie first time in many months a 
gathering canopy of cloud shut out tlie glory of sunset. We, 
however, mounted our donkeys and rode northwards. With 
better beasts we might perhaps have gained our end ; as it 
was, seeing that it grew darker every moment, we presently 
gave in, and instead of trying to push on farther, contented 
ourselves with climbing a high mound which commanded the 
view towards Teui. 

The clouds by this time were fast closing round, and waves 
of shadows were creeping over the plain. To our left rose 
the near mountain-barrier, dusk and lowering ; to our right 
stretched the misty corn-flats ; at our feet, all hillocks and 
open graves, lay the desolate necropolis. Beyond the palms 
that fringed the edge of the desert — beyond a dark streak 
that marked the site of Teni — rose, purple in shadow against 
the twilight, a steep and solitary hill. This hill, called by 
the natives Kora-es-Sultan, or the Mound of the King, was 
the tumulus we so desired to see. Viewed from a distance 
and by so uncertain a light, it looked exactly like a volcanic 
cone of perhaps a couple of hundred feet in height. It is, 
however, wholly artificial, and consists of a mass of graves 
heaped one above another in historic strata ; each layer, as 
it were, the record of an era ; the whole, a kind of human 
coral reef built up from age to age with the ashes of genera- 
tions. 

For some years past, the Egyptian Government had been 
gradually excavating this extraordinary mound. The lower 
it was opened, the more ancient were its contents. So stead- 
ily retrogressive, indeed, were the interments, that it seemed 
as if the spade of the digger might possibly strike tombs of 
the First Dynasty, and so restore to light relics of men who 
lived in the age of Mena. " According to Plutarch." wrote 
Mariette,^ " wealthy Egyptians came from all parts of Egypt 
to be buried at Abydos, in order that their bones might rest 
near Osiris. Very probably the tombs of Kom-es-Sultan be- 
long to those personages mentioned by Plutarch. Nor is 
this the only interest attaching to the mound of Kom-es- 
Sultan. The famous tomb of Osiris cannot be far distant ; 
and certain indications lead us to think that it is excavated 
in precisely that foundation of rock whicli serves as the 

^ See Itin4raire de la Hmite Ef/t/pte : A. Mariette Bey : p. 147. Alex. 
1872. 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 447 

nucleus of this mound. Thus the persons buried in Kom- 

es-Sultaii lay as near as possible to the divine tomb. The 
works now in progress at this point have therefore a two- 
fold interest. They may yield tombs yet more xuid more 
ancient — tombs even of the First Dynasty; and some day 
or another they may discover to us the hitherto unknown 
and hidden entrance to the tomb of the God.'"' ^ 

I bitterly regretted at the time that I could not at least 
ride to the foot of Kom-es-Sultan ; but I think now that I 
prefer to remember it as I saw it from afar off, clothed with 
mystery, in the gloom of that dusky evening. 

There was a heavy silence in the air, and a melancholy as 
of the burden of ages. The tumbled hillocks looked like a 
ghastly sea, and bej-ond the verge of the desert it was 
already night. Presently, from among the grave-pits, there 
crept towards us a slowly moving cloud. As it drew nearer 
— soft, filmy, shifting, unreal — it proved to be the dust 
raised by an immense flock of sheep. On they came, a brown 
compact mass, their shepherd showing dimly now and then, 
through openings in the cloud. The last pale gleam from 
above caught them for a moment ere they melted, ghost-like, 
into the murky plain. Then we went down ourselves, and 
threaded the track between the mounds and the valley. 
Palms and houses loomed vaguely out of the dusk ; and a 
caravan of camels, stalking by with swift and noiseless foot- 
fall, looked like shadows projected on a background of mist. 

As the night deepened the air became stifling. There 
were no stars, and we could scarcely see a yard before us. 
Crawling slowly along the steep causeway, we felt, but could 
distinguish nothing of the plain stretching away on either 
side. Meanwhile the frogs croaked furiously, and our don- 
keys stumbled at every step. When at length we drew near 
Samata, it was close upon ten o'clock, and Reis Hassan had 
just started with men and torches to meet us. 

Next morning earlj^ we once again passed Girgeh, with its 
ruined mosque and still unfallen column ; and about noonday 
moored at a place called Ayserat, where we paid a visit to 
a native gentleman, one Ahmed Abu Ratab Aga, to whom we 
carried letters of introduction. Ratab Aga owns large estates 
in this province ; is great in horse-flesli ; and lives in patri- 

1 See Itin^raire de la Haute Egypte : A. Mariette Bey : p. 148. The 
hope here expressed was, however, not fulfilled; tomhs of the IVth orVth 
Dynasties being, I believe, the earliest discovered. [Note to Second 
Edition.] 



448 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

arclial fashion surrounded by a numerous clan of kinsfolk 
and dependants. His residence at Ayserat consists of a 
cluster of three or four large houses, a score or so of pigeon- 
towers, an extensive garden, stabling, exercising-ground, and 
a large courtyard ; the whole enclosed by a wall of circuit, 
and entered by a fine Arabesque gateway. He received us 
in a loggia of lattice-work overlooking the courtyard, and 
had three of his finest horses — a grey, a bay, and a chestnut 
— brought out for us to admire. They were just such horses 
as Velasquez loved to paint — thick in the neck, small in the 
head, solid in the barrel, with wavy manes, and long silky 
tails set high and standing off straight in true Arab fashion. 
We doubted, however, that they were altogether pur sany. 
They looked wonderfully picturesque with their gold-embroi- 
dered saddlecloths, peaked saddles covered with crimson, 
green, and blue velvet, long shovel-stirrups and tasselled 
head-gear. The Aga's brother and nephews put them through 
their paces. They knelt to be mounted; lay down and died 
at the word of command ; dashed from perfect immobility 
into a furious gallop ; and when at fullest speed, stopped short, 
flung themselves back upon their haiinches, and stood like 
horses of stone. We were told that our host had a hundred 
such standing in his stables. Pipes, coffee, and an endless 
succession of different kinds of sherbets went round all the 
time our visit lasted ; and in the course of conversation, we 
learned that not only the wages of agricultural labourers, but 
even part of the taxes to the Khedive, are here paid in corn. 
Before leaving, L., the Little Lady, and the Writer were 
conducted to the hareem, and introduced to the ladies of the 
establishment. We found them in a separate building with 
a separate courtyard, living after the usual dreary way of 
Eastern women, with apparently no kind of occupation and 
not even a garden to walk in. The Aga's principal Avife (I 
believe he had but two) was a beautiful woman, Avith auburn 
hair, soft brown eyes, and a lovely complexion. She received 
us on the threshold, led us into a saloon surrounded by a 
divan, and with some pride showed us her five children. 
The eldest was a graceful girl of thirteen ; the youngest, a 
little fellow of four. Mother and daughter were dressed 
alike in black robes embroidered with silver, pink velvet 
slippers on bare feet, silver bracelets and anklets, and full 
pink Turkish trowsers. They wore their hair cut straight 
across the brow, plaited in long tails behind, and dressed 
with coins and pendants ; while from the back of the head 



AJiYDOS AND CAIRO. 449 

there hung a veil of thin black gauze, also embroidered with 
silver. Another lady, whom we took for the second wife, 
and who was extremly plain, had still richer and more 
massive ornaments, but seemed to hold an inferior position 
in the hareem. There were perhaps a dozen women and 
girls in all, two of whom were black. 

One of the little boys had been ill all his short life, and 
looked as if he could not last many more months. The poor 
mother implored us to prescribe for him. It was in vain to 
tell her that we knew nothing of the nature of his disease 
and had no skill to cure it. She still entreated, and would 
take no refusal ; so in pity we sent her some harmless 
medicines. 

We had little opportunity of observing domestic life in 
Egypt. L. visited some of the vice-regal hareems at Cairo, 
and brought away on each occasion the same impression of 
dreariness. A little embroidery, a few musical toys of 
Geneva manufacture, a daily drive on the Shubra road, pipes, 
cigarettes, sweetmeats, jewellery, and gossip, hll up the aim- 
less days of most Egyptian ladies of rank. There are, how- 
ever, some who take an active interest in politics ; and in 
Cairo and Alexandria the opera-boxes of the Khedive and the 
great Pashas are nightly occupied by ladies. But it is not 
by the daily life of the wives of princes and nobles, but by 
the life of the lesser gentry and upper middle-class, that a 
domestic system should be judged. These ladies of Ayserat 
had no London-built brougham, no Shubra road, no opera. 
They were absolutely without mental resources ; and they 
were even without the means of taking air and exercise. 
One could see that time hung heavy on their hands, and that 
they took but a feeble interest in the things around them. 
The hareem stairs were dirty; the rooms were untidy; the 
general aspect of the place Avas slatternly and neglected. 
As for the inmates, though all good-nature and gentleness, 
tlieir faces bore the expression of people who are habitually 
bored. At Luxor, L. and the Writer paid a visit to the wife 
of an intelligent and gentlemanly Arab, son of the late 
governor of that place. This was a middle-class hareem. 
The couple were young, and not rich. They occupied a 
small house, which commanded no view and had no garden. 
Their little courtyard was given up to the poultry ; their tiny 
terrace above was less than twelve feet square ; and they 
were surrounded on all sides by houses. Yet in this stifling- 
prison the young wife lived, apparently contented, from 



450 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



year's end to year's end. She literally never went out. As 
a child, she had no doubt enjoyed some kind of liberty ; but 
as a marriageable girl, and as a bride, she was as much a 
prisoner as a bird in a cage. Born and bred in Luxor, she 
had never seen Karnak ; yet Karnak is only two miles dis- 
tant. We asked her if she would like to go there with us ; 
but she laughed and shook her head. She was incapable 
even of curiosity. 

It seemed to us that the wives of the Fellahin were in 
truth the happiest women in Egypt. They work hard and 
are bitterly poor ; but they have the free use of their limbs. 




SAKKIKH AT SIOt. 



and they at least know the fresh air, the sunshine, and the 
open fields. 

When we left Ayserat, there still lay 335 miles between 
us and Cairo. From this time, the navigation of the Nile 
became every day more difficult. The daliabeeyah, too, got 
heated through and through, so that not even sluicing and 
swabbing availed to keep down the temperature. At night 
when we went to our sleeping-cabins, the timbers alongside 
of our berths were as hot to the hand as a screen in front of 
a great fire. Our crew, though to the manner born, suffered 
even more than ourselves ; and L. at this time had generally 
a case of sunstroke on her hands. One by one, we passed 
the places we had seen on our way up — Siut, Manfalut, 
Gebel Abufayda, Roda, Minieh. After all, we did not see 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 



451 



Beni Hassan. The day we reached that part of the river, a 
furious sandstorm was raging; such a storm that even the 
Writer was daunted. Three days later, we took the rail at 
Bibbeh and went on to Cairo, leaving the Philse to follow as 
fast as wind and weather might permit. 




" IN THE NAMIC OF TllK I'ltOl'HET — CAKES ! " 

We were so wedded by this time to dahabeeyah-life, that 
we felt lost at first in the big rooms at Shepheard's Hotel, 
and altogether bewildered in the crowded streets. Yet here 
was Cairo, more picturesque, more beautiful than ever. Here 
were the same merchants squatting on the same carpets and 
smoking the same pipes, in the Tunis bazaar ; here was the 
same old cake-seller still ensconced in the same doorway in 



452 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

the Muski ; here were the same jewellers selling bracelets 
in the Khan-Khalili ; the same money-changers sitting be- 
hind their little tables at the corners of the streets ; the 
same veiled ladies riding on donkeys and driving in carriages ; 
the same hurrying funerals, and noisy weddings ; the same 
odd cries, and motley costumes, and unaccustomed trades. 
Nothing was changed. We soon dropped back into the old 
life of sight-seeing and shopping — buying rugs and silks, 
and silver ornaments, and old embroideries, and Turkish 
slippers, and all sorts of antique and pretty trifles ; going 
from Mohammedan mosques to rare old Coptic churches ; 
dropping in for an hour or two most afternoons at the Boulak 
Museum ; and generally ending the day's work with a drive 
on the Shubra road, or a stroll round the Esbekiyeh Gardens. 

The M6lid-en-]Srebi, or Festival of the Birth of the Prophet, 
was being held at this time in a tract of waste ground on the 
road to Old Cairo. Here, in some twenty or thirty large 
open tents ranged in a circle, there were readings of the 
Koran and meetings of dervishes going on by day and night, 
Avithout intermission, for nearly a fortnight. After dark, 
when the tents were all ablaze with lighted chandeliers, and 
the dervishes were howling and leaping, and fireworks were 
being let off from an illuminated platform in the middle of 
the area, the scene was extraordinary. All Cairo used to be 
there, on foot or in carriages, between eight o'clock and mid- 
night every evening ; the veiled ladies of the Khedive's 
hareem in their miniature broughams being foremost among 
the spectators. 

The M6lid-en-iSrebi ends with the performance of the 
Doseh, when the Sheykh of the Saiidiyeh Dervishes rides 
over a road of prostrate fanatics. L. and the Writer wit- 
nessed this sight from the tent of the Governor of Cairo. 
Drunk with opium, fasting, and praying, rolling their heads, 
and foaming at the mouth, some hundreds of wretched crea- 
tures lay down in the road packed as close as paving stones, 
and were walked and ridden over before our eyes. The 
standard-bearers came first ; then a priest reading the Koran 
aloud ; then the Sheykh on his white Arab, supported on 
either side b}^ barefooted priests. The beautiful horse trod 
with evident reluctance, and as lightly and swiftly as possi- 
ble, on the human causeway under his hoofs. The Moham- 
medans aver that no one is injured, or even bruised,-^ on 

1 " It is said that these persons, as well as the Sheykh, make use of cer- 
tain words (that is, repeat prayers and invocations) on the day preceding' 



ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 453 

this holy occasion ; but I saw some men carried away in con- 
vulsions, who looked as if they would never walk again. ^ 

It is difficult to say but a few inadequate words of a place 
about which an instructive volume might be written ; yet to 
pass the Boulak Museum in silence is impossible. This 
famous collection is due, in the first instance, to the liberal- 
ity of the late Khedive and the labours of Mariette. With 
the exception of Mehemet Ali, who excavated the Temple of 
Denderah, no previous Viceroy of Egypt had ever interested 
himself in the archaeology of the country. Those who cared 
for such rubbish as encumbered the soil or lay hidden be- 
neath the sands of the desert, were free to take it ; and no 
favour was more frequently asked, or more readily granted, 
than permission to dig for "anteekahs." Hence the Egyp- 
tian wealth of our museums. Hence the numerous private 
collections dispersed throughout Europe. Ismail Pasha, 
however, put an end to that wholesale pillage; and, for the 
first time since ever "mummy was sold for balsam," or for 
bric-a-brac, it became illegal to export antiquities. Thus, 
for the first time, Egypt began to possess a national collec- 
tion. 

Youngest of great museums, the Boulak collection is the 
wealthiest in the world in portrait-statues of private individ- 
uals, in funerary tablets, in amulets, and in personal relics of 
the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley. It is necessarily 
less rich in such colossal statues as fill the great galleries of 
the British Museum, the Turin Museum, and the Louvre. 
These, being above ground and comparatively few in num- 
ber, were for the most part seized upon long since, and 
transported to Europe. The Boulak statues are the product 
of the tombs. The famous wooden " Sheykh " about which 
so much has been written,^ the magnificent diorite statue of 
Khafra (Chephren), the builder of the Second Pyramid, the 

this performance, to enable them to endure without injury the tread of the 
horse ; and that some not thus prepared, having ventured to lie down to be 
ridden over, have, on more than one occasion, been either killed or severely 
injured. The performance is considered as a miracle vouchsafed through 
supernatural power, and which has been granted to every successive 
Sheykh of the Saadeeyeh." See Lane's Modern Egyptians, chap. xxiv. p. 
453. Lond. 1860. 

1 This barbarous rite has been abolished by the present Khedive. 
[Note to Second Edition.] 

2 See Egi/pt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive, J. B. Zincke, chap. ix. 
p. 72. Lond. 1873. Also La Sculpture Egyptienne, par E. Soldi, p. 57. 
Paris, 1876. Also The Ethnology of Egypt, by Professor Owen, C.B. 
Journal of Anthropological Institute, vol. iv. 1874, p. 227. The name of 
this personage was Ra^em-ka. 



454 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



two marvellous sitting statues of Prince Ra-hotep and Prin- 
cess Nefer-t, are all portraits ; and, like their tombs, were 
executed during the lifetime of the persons represented. 
Crossing the threshold of the Great Vestibule,^ one is sur- 
rounded by a host of these extraordinary figures, erect, 
coloured, clothed, all but in motion. It is like entering the 
crowded anteroom of a royal palace in the time of the 
Ancient Empire. 

The greater number of the Boulak portrait-statues are 
sculptured in what is called the hieratic attitude ; that is, 




with the left arm down and pressed closed to the body, the 
left hand holding a roll of papyrus, the right leg advanced, 
and the right hand raised, as grasping the walking-staff. It 
occurred to me tliat there might be a deeper significance 
than at first sight appears in tliis conventional attitude, and 
that it perhaps suggests the moment of resurrection, when 
the deceased, holding fast by his copy of the Book of the 
Dead, walks forth from his tomb into the light of life 
eternal. 

Of all the statues liere — one may say, indeed, of all known 

1 It is in the Great Vestibule that we find the statue of Ti. See chap, 
iv. p. 59. 



ABTBOS AND CAIRO. 455 

Egyptian statues — those of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess 
Nefer-t are the most wonderful. They are probably the old- 
est portrait-statues in the world.* They come from a tomb 
of the Ilird Dynasty, and are contemporary with Snefru, a 
king who reigned before the time of Khufu and Khafra. 
That is to say, these people who sit before us side by side, 
coloured to the life, fresh and glowing as the day when they 
gave the artist his last sitting, lived at a time when the 
great pyramids of Ghizeh were not yet built, and at a date 
which is variously calculated as from about 6300 to 4000 
years before the present day. The princess wears her hair 
precisely as it is still worn in ISTubia, and her necklace of 
cabochon drops is of a pattern much favoured by the modern 
Ghawazi. The eyes of both statues are inserted. The eye- 
ball, which is set in an eyelid of bronze, is made of opaque 
white quartz, with an iris of rock-crystal enclosing a pupil of 
some kind of brilliant metal. This treatment — of which 
there are one or two other instances extant — gives to the 
eyes a look of intelligence that is almost appalling. There is 
a play of light within the orb, and apparently a living moist- 
ure upon the surface, which has never been approached by 
the most skilfully made glass eyes of modern manufacture.^ 
Of the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, of the superb series of 
engraved scarabaei, of the rings, amulets, and toilette orna- 
ments, of the vases in bronze, silver, alabaster, and porcelain, 
of the libation-tables, the woven stuffs, the terra-cottas, the 

1 There is no evidence to show that the statues of Sepa and Nesa in the 
Louvre are older than the IVth Dynasty. 

2 " Enfin nous signalerons I'importance des statues de Meydoum au 
point de vue ethnographique. Si la race Egyptienne etait a cette epoque 
celle dont les deux statues nous offrent le type, il faut convenir qu'elle ne 
ressemblait en rien a la race qui habitait le nord de I'Egypte quelques 
anne'es seulement apres Snetron." ^ Cat. du Mitsee de Botdaq. A. Mari- 
ETTE Bey. p. 277 ; Paris, 1872. 

Of the heads of these two statues Professor Owen remarks that " the 
brain-case of the male is a full oval, the parietal bosses feebly indicated; 
in vertical contour the fronto-parietal part is little elevated, rather flattened 
than convex ; the frontal sinuses are slightly indicated ; the forehead is 
fairly developed but not prominent. The lips are fuller than in the ma- 
jority of Europeans ; but the mouth is not prognathic. . . . The features 
of the female conform in type to those of the male, but show more delicacy 
and finish. . . . The statue of the female is coloured of a lighter tint than 
that of the male, indicating the eifects of better clothing and less exposure 
to the sun. And here it may be remarked that the racial character of com- 
plexion is significantly manifested by such evidences of the degree of tint 
due to individual exposure. . . . The primitive race-tint of the Egyptians 
is perhaps more truly indicated by the colour of the princess in these 
painted portrait-statues than by that of her more scantily clad husband or 
male relative." — The Ethnology of Egypt, \>y Sir Richard Owen, K.C.B. 
Journal of Anthropological Institute, vol. iv. Lond. 1874; p. 225 et seq. 



456 ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 

artists' models, the lamps, the silver boats, the weapons, the 
papyri, the thousand-and-one curious personal relics and 
articles of domestic use which are broughc together within 
these walls, I have no space to tell. Except the collection 
of Pompeian relics in Naples, there is nothing elsewhere to 
compare with the collection at Boulak ; and the villas of 
Pompeii have yielded no such gems and jewels as the tombs 
of ancient Egypt. It is not too much to say that if these 
dead and mummied people could come back to earth, the 
priest would here find all the Gods of his Pantheon ; the 
king his sceptre; the queen her crown-jewels; the scribe his 
palette; the soldier his arms; the workman his tools; the 
barber his razors ; the husbandman his hoe ; the housewife 
her broom; the child his toys; the beauty her combs and 
kohl bottles and mirrors. The furniture of the house is 
here, as well as the furniture of the tomb. Here, too, is the 
broken sistrum buried with the dead in token of the grief of 
the living. 

Waiting the construction of a more suitable edifice, the 
present building gives temporary shelter to the collection. 
In the meanwhile, if there was nothing else to tempt the 
traveller to Cairo, the Boulak Museum would alone be worth 
the journey from Europe. 

The first excursion one makes on returning to Cairo, the 
last one makes before leaving, is to Ghizeli. It is impossible 
to get tired of the Pyramids. Here L. and the Writer spent 
their last day with the Happy Couple. 

We left Cairo early, and met all the market-folk coming 
in from the country — donkeys and carts laden Avith green 
stuff, and veiled women with towers of baskets on their 
heads. The Khedive's new palace was swarming already 
with masons, and files of camels were bringing limestone 
blocks for the builders. Next comes the open corn-plain, 
part yellow, part green — the long straight road bordered 
with acacias — beyond all, the desert-platform, and the 
Pyramids, half in light, half in greenish-grey shadow, against 
the horizon. I never could understand why it is that the 
Second Pyramid, though it is smaller and farther off, looks 
from this point of view bigger than the Fij'st. Farther on, 
the brown Fellahin, knee-deep in purple blossom, are cutting 
the clover. The camels carry it away. The goats and buf- 
faloes feed in the clearings. Then comes the half-way tomb 
nestled in greenery, where men and horses stay to drink ; 
and soon we are skirtinfr a 2:reat backwater which reflects 



I ABYDOS AND CAIRO. 457 

\ 

the pyrainii[is like a mirror. Villages, shadufs, herds and 
flocks, tracta of palms, corn-flats, and spaces of rich, dark 
fallow, now succeed each other; and then once more comes 
the sandy slope, and the cavernous ridge of ancient yellow 
rock, and the G-reat Pyramid with its shadow-side towards 
us, darkening the light of day. 

Neither L. nor the Writer went inside the Great Pyramid. 
The idle man did so this day, and L's maid on another 
occasion ; and both reported of the place as so stifling within, 
so foul underfoot, and so fatiguing, that, somehow, we each 
time put it off, and ended by missing it. The ascent is 
extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks, there 
is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to And a half- 
way rest for the toe of one's boot, so as to divide the dis- 
tance. With the help of three Arabs, nothing can well be 
less fatiguing. As for the men, they are helpful and courte- 
ous, and as clever as possible ; and coax one on from block 
to block in all the languages of Europe. 

" Pazienza, Signora ! Allez doucement — all serene ! We 
half-way now — dem halben-weg, Fraulein. Ne vous pressez- 
pas. Mademoiselle. Chi va sano, va lontano. Six step more 
and ecco la cima ! " 

" You should add the other half of the proverb, amici," 
said I. " Chi va forte, va alia morte." 

My Arabs had never heard this before, and were delighted 
with it. They repeated it again and again, and committed 
it to memory with great satisfaction. I asked them why 
they did not cut steps in the blocks, so as to make the ascent 
easier for ladies. The answer was ready and honest. 

''No, no. Mademoiselle ! Arab very stupid to do that. If 
Arab makes good steps, Howadji goes up alone. No more 
want Arab man to help him up, and Arab man earn no more 
dollars ! " 

They offered to sing " Yankee Doodle " when we reached 
the top ; then, finding we were English, shouted " God save 
the Queen ! " and told us that the Prince of Wales had given 
£40 to the Pyramid Arabs when he came here with the 
Princess two years before ; which, however, we took the lib- 
erty to doubt. 

The space on the top of the Great Pyramid is said to be 
30 feet square. It is not, as I had expected, a level plat- 
form. Some blocks of the next tier remain, and two or three 
of the tier next above that; so making pleasant seats and 
shady corners. What struck us most on reaching the top, 



458 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the Second 
Pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain ; 
yet so close, that I fancied I could almost touch it by put- 
ting out my hand. Every detail of the surface, every crack 
and parti-coloured stain in the shining stucco that yet clings 
about the apex, was distinctly visible. 

The view from this place is immense. The country is so 
fiat, the atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, that 
one really sees more and sees farther than from many a 
mountain summit of ten or twelve thousand feet. The 
ground lies, as it were, immediately under one ; and the 
great JSTecropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. The effect 
must, I imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape 




SPHINX AND PYRAMIDS. 



seen from a balloon. Without ascending the Pyramid, it is 
certainly not possible to form a clear notion of the way in 
which this great burial-field is laid out. We see from this 
])oint how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its quad- 
rangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, 
others partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like the 
roofing-stones of the Temples. We see how Khufu and 
Khafra and Menkara lay, each under his mountain of stone, 
with his family and his nobles around him. We see the 
great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, 
and along which the giant stones Avere brought. Recognis- 
ing how clearly the place is a great cemetery, one marvels 
at the ingenious theories which turn the pyramids into 



ABYUOS AND CAIRO. 459 

astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of meas- 
urement. They are the grandest graves ^ in all the world — 
and they are nothing more. 

A little way to the southward, from the midst of a sandy 
hollow, rises the head of the Sphinx. Older than the Pyra- 
mids, older than history, the monster lies couchant like a 
Avatch-dog, looking ever to the east, as if for some dawn that 
has not yet risen. ^ A depression in the sand close by marks 
the site of that strange monument miscalled the Temple of 
the Sphinx.^ Farther away to the west on the highest slope 
of this part of the desert platform, stands the Pyramid of 

1 The word pyramid, for which so many derivations have been sug- 
gested, is shown in the Geometrical Papyrus of the British Museum to 
be distinctly Egyptian, and is written Per-em-tts. 

2 " On salt par une stele du musee de Boulaq, que le grand Sphinx est 
anterieur au Rois Cheops de la IV« Dynastie." Die. d'Arch. Egyptienne : 
Article Sphinx. P. Pierret. Paris, 1875. 

[It M'^as the opinion of Mariette, and is the opinion of Professor Maspero, 
that the Sphinx dates from the inconceivably remote period of the Ilorshesv, 
or " followers of Horus ; " that is to say, from those prehistoric times when 
Egypt was ruled by a number of petty chieftains, before Mena welded the 
ancient principalities into a united kingdom. Those principalities then 
became the Nomes, or Provinces, of historic times ; and the former local 
chieftains became semi-independent feudatories, such as we find surviving 
with undiminished authority and importance during the Xllth Dynasty. — 
Note to Second Edition.] 

A long-disputed question as to the meaning of the Sphinx has of late 
been finally solved. The Sphinx is shown by M. J. de Rouge, according 
to an inscription at Edfu, to represent a transformation of Horus, who in 
order to vanquish Set (Typhon) took the shape of a human-headed lion. 
It was under this form that Horus was adored in the Nome Leontopolites. 
In the above-mentioned Stela of Boulak, known as the stone of Cheops, the 
Great Sphinx is especially designated as the Sphinx of Hor-em-Khou, or 
Horus-on-the-Horizon. This is evidently in reference to the orientation of 
the figure. It has often been asked why the Sphinx is turned to the east. 
I presume the answer would be. Because Horus, avenger of Osiris, looks 
to the east, awaiting the return of his father from the lower world. As 
Horus was supposed to liave reigned over Egypt, every Pharaoh took the 
title of Living Horus, Golden Hawk, etc. etc. Hence the features of the 
reigning King were always given to the Sphinx form when architecturally 
employed, as at Karnak, Wady Sabooah, Tanis, etc. etc. 

3 It is certainly not a Temple. It may be a mastaba, or votive chapel. 
It looks most like a tomb. It is entirely built of plain and highly polished 
monoliths of alabaster and red granite, laid square and simply, like a sort 
of costly and magnificent Stonehenge ; and it consists of a forecourt, a hall 
of pillars, three principal chambers, some smaller chambers, a secret recess, 
and a well. The chambers contain horizontal niches which it is difficult 
to suppose could have been intended for anything but the reception of 
mummies ; and at the bottom of the well were found three statues of King 
Khafra (Chephren) ; one of which is the famous diorite portrait-statue of 
the Boulak Museum. In an interesting article contributed to the Revve 
Arch. (vol. xxvi. Paris, 1873), M. du Barry-Merval has shown, as it seems, 
quite clearly, that the Temple of the Sphinx is in fact a dependency of tlie 
Second Pyramid. It is possible that the niches may have been designed 
for the Queen and family of Khafra, whose own mummy would of course 
be hurled in his Pvramid. 



460 



ONE THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE. 



Menkara (Mycerinus). It has lost but five feet of its ori- 
ginal height, and from this distance it looks quite perfect. 

Such^ — set in a waste of desert — are the main objects, 
and the nearest objects, on which our eyes first rest. As a 
whole, the view is more long than wide, being bounded to 
the westward by the Libyan range, and to the eastward by 
the Mokattam hills. At the foot of those yellow hills, di- 
vided from us by the cultivated plain across which we have 
just driven, lies Cairo, all glittering domes half seen through 
a sunlit haze. Overlooking the fairy city stands the Mosque 
of the Citadel, its mast-like minarets piercing the clearer 
atmosphere. Far to the northward, traversing reach after 
reach of shadowy palm-groves, the eye loses itself in the 
dim and fertile distances of the Delta. To the west and 
south, all is desert. It begins here at our feet — a rolling 
wilderness of valleys and slopes and rivers and seas of sand, 
broken here and there by abrupt ridges of rock, and mounds 
of ruined masonry, and open graves. A silver line skirts 
the edge of this dead world, and vanishes 
southward in the sun-mist that shimmers on 
the farthest horizon. To the left of that 
silver line we see the quarried cliffs of 
Turra, marble white ; opposite Turra, the 
plumy palms of Memphis. On the desert 
platform above, clear though faint, the 
Pyramids of Abusir and Sakkarah, and 
Dahshiir. Every stage of the Pyramid of 
Ouenephes, banded in light and shade, is 
plain to see. So is the dome-like summit of 
the great Pyramid of Dahshur. Even the 
brick ruin beside it which we took for a black 
rock as we went up the river, and which 
looks like a black rock still, is perfectly visible. Farthest 
of them all, showing pale and sharp amid the palpitating 
blaze of noon, stands, like an unfinished tower of Babel, the 
Pyramid of Meydum. It is in this direction that our eyes 
turn oftenest — to the measureless desert in its mystery of 
light and silence ; to the Nile where it gleams out again and 
again, till it melts at last into that faint far distance beyond 
which lie Thebes, and Philae, and Abou Simbel. 




ISliOKKN SISTRUM. 



APPENDIX I. 

A. M'Callum, Esq., to the Editou of "The Times." i 

Sir — It may interest your readers to learn that at the south side of 
the great Temple of Abou Sinibel, I found the entrance to a painted 
chamber rock-cut, and measuring 21 ft. 2^ in., by 14 ft. 8 in., and 12 ft. 
high to tlie spring of the arcli, elaborately sculptured and painted in 
the best style of the best period of Egyptian art, bearing the portraits 
of Rameses tlie Ureat and his cartouches, and in a state of the highest 
preservation. Tliis chamber is preceded by the ruins of a vaulted 
atrium, in simdried brickworlv, and adjoins the remains of what would 
appear to be a massive wall or pylon, which contains a staircase ter- 
minating in an arched doorway leading to the vaulted atrium before 
mentioned. 

The doorway of the painted chamber, the staircase, and the arch, 
were all buried in sand and debris. The chamber appears to have been 
covered and lost sight of since a very early period, being wholly free 
from mutilation and from the scribbling of travellers ancient and 
modern. 

The staircase was not opened until the 18th, and the bones of a 
woman and child, with two small cinerary urns, were there discovered 
by a gentleman of our party, buried in tlie sand. This was doubtless a 
subsequent interment. Whether this painted chamber is the inner 
sanctuary of a small Temple, or part of a tomb, or only a speos, like 
the well-known grottoes at Ibrim, is a question for future excavators to 
determine. — I have the honor to be, Sir, yours, etc. etc. 

Andrew M'Callum. 

KoROSKo, Nubia, Feb. Wth, 1874. 



APPENDIX II. 

The Egyptian Pantheon. 

" The deities of ancient Egypt consist of celestial, terrestrial, and 
infernal gods, and of many inferior personages, either representatives 
of the greater gods or else attendants upon them. Most of the gods 
were connected with the Sun, and represented that luminary in its 
passage through the upper hemisphere or Heaven and the lower hemi- 

' This letter appeared in the Times of March 18th. 1874. 
461 



4(52 APPENDIX. 

sphere or Hades. To the deities of the Solar cycle belonged the great 
gods of Thebes and Heliopolis. In the local worship of Egypt tlie 
deities were arranged in local triads: thus, at Menipliis, Ptah, his wife 
Merienptah, and their son Nefer Atum, formed a triad, to which was 
sometimes added the goddess East or Bubastis. At Abydos the local 
triad was Osiris, Isis, and Horus, with Nephthys; at Thebes, Amen-Ka 
or Amnion, Mut, and Chons, with Neith; at Elephantine, Kneph, 
Anuka, Seti, and Hak. In most instances the names of the gods are 
Egyptian; thus, Ptah meant 'the opener;' Amen, 'the concealed;' 
lia, 'the sun' or 'day;' Athor, 'the house of Horns;' but some few, 
especially of later times, were introduced from Semitic sources, as Bal 
or Baal, Astaruta or Astarte, Khen or Kiun, Respu or lleseph. Besides 
the principal gods, several inferioi" or parhedral gods, sometimes per- 
sonifications of the faculties, senses, and other objects, are introduced 
into the religious system, and genii, spirits, or personified souls of 
deities formed part of the same. At a period subsequent to their first 
introduction the gods were divided into three orders. The first or 
highest comprised eight deities, who were different in the Memphian 
ami Theban systems. They were supposed to have reigned over Egypt 
before the time of mortals. The eight gods of the first order at Mem- 
pliis were — 1. Ptah; 2. Shu; 3. Tefnu; 4. Seb; 5. Nut; 6. Osiris; 7. Isis 
and Horus; 8. Athor. Those of Tiiebes were — 1. Amen-Ra; 2. Mentu; 
3. Atuiii; 4. Shu and Tefnu; 5. Seb; 6. Osiris; 7. Set and Nephthys; 
S. Horus and Athor. The gods of the second order were twelve in num- 
ber, but the name of one only, an Egyptian Hercules, has been pre- 
served. The third order is stated to have comprised Osiris, who, it 
will be seen, belonged to the first order." — Guide to the First and 
Second Egyptian Booms ; Brit. Mus(b. S. Bikch, 1874. 

The Gods most commonly represented upon the monuments are 
Phtah, Knum, Ra, Amen-Ra, Khem, Osiris, Nefer Atum or Tum, 
Tlioth, Seb, Set, Khons, Horus, Maut, Neith, Isis, Nut, Hathor, and 
Bast. They are distinguished by the following attributes: — 

Phtah, or Ptah : — In form a mummy, holding the emblem called by 
some the Nilometer, by others the emblem of Stability. Called "the 
Father of the Beginning, the Creator of the Egg of the Sun and Moon." 
Chief Deity of Memphis. 

Kneph, Knum, or Knouphis : — Ram-headed. Called the Maker of 
Gods and men; the Soul of the Gods. Chief Deity of Elephantine and 
the Cataracts. 

Ra: — Hawk-headed, and crowned with the sun-disk encircled by an 
asp. The divine disposer and organiser of the world. Adored through- 
out Egypt. 

Amen-Ra: — Of human form, crowned with a flat-topped cap and 
two long straight phunes; clotlied in tlie schenti; his flesh sometimes 
paiTited blue. There are various forms of this god (see footnote, p. 
323), but he is most generallv described as King of the Gods. Chief 
Deity of Thebes. 

Khem: — Of human form mummified; wears headdress of Amen-Ra; 
his right hand uplifted, holding the flail. The God of productiveness 
and generation. Chief Deity of Khemmis, or Ekhmeem. Is identified 
in later times with Amen, and called Amen-Khem. 

Osiris: — Of human form, mummified, crowned with a mitre, and 
holding the flail and crook. Called the Good Being; the Lord above 
all; the One Lord. Was the God of the lower world; Judge of the 
dead; and representative of the Sun below the liorizon. Adored 
throughout Egypt. Local Deity of Abydos. 



APPENDIX. 463 

Nefer Atum : — Human-headed, and crowned wiih the pschent. 
This God represented the setting sun, or the sun descending to liglit 
tlie lower world. Local Deity of Heliopolis. 

Thoth: — In form a man, ibis-headed, generally depicted with the 
pen and palette of a scribe. Was the God of the moon, and of letters. 
Local Deity of Sesoon, or Hermopolis. 

Seb : — The "Father of the Gods," and deity of terrestrial vegeta- 
tion. In form a man with a goose upon liis head. 

•Set : — Represented by a symbolic animal, with a muzzle and ears like 
a jackal, the body of an ass, and an upright tail, like the tail of a lion. 
Was originally a warlike God, and became in later times the symbol of 
evil and the enemy of Osiris. 

Khons : — Hawk-headed, crowned with the sun-disk and horns. Is 
represented sometimes as a youth with the side-lock, standing on a 
crocodile. 

Horus : — Horus appears variously as Horus, Horns Aroeris, and 
Horus Harpakhrat (Harpocrates), or Horus the child. Is represented 
under the first two forms as a man, hawk-headed, wearing the double 
crown of Egypt; in tlie latter as a child with the side-lock. Local Deity 
of Edfu (Apollinopolis Magna). 

Maut : — A woman draped, and crowned with the pschent; generally 
with a cap below the pschent repi'esenting a vulture. Adored at 
Tliebes. 

Neith : — A woman draped, holding sometimes a bow and arrows, 
crowned with the crown of Lower Egypt. She presided over war, and 
the loom. Worshipped at Thebes. 

Isis : — A woman crow^ned with the sun-disk surmounted by a throne, 
and sometimes enclosed between horns. Adored at Abydos and Philfe. 
Her soul resided in Sothis, or the Dog-star. 

Nut : — A woman curved so as to touch the ground with her fingers. 
She represents the vault of heaven, and is the mother of the Gods. 

HatJior : — Cow-headed, and crowned with the disk and plumes. 
Deity of Amenti, or the Egyptian Hades. Worshipped at Denderah. 

Bafit and Sekhet : — Bast and Sekhet appear to be two forms of the 
same Goddess. As Sekhet she is represented as a woman, lion-headed, 
with the disk and urajus; as Bast, she is cat-headed, and holds a sis- 
truni. Adored as Bubastis. 



APPENDIX III. 

The Religious Belief of the Egyptians. 

Did the Egyptians believe in one Eternal God, whose attributes were 
merely symbolised by their numerous deities; or must the whole 
structure of their faith be resolved into a solar myth, with its various 
and inevitable ramifications ? This is the great problem of Egyptology, 
and it is a problem that has not yet been solved. Egyptologists differ 
so widely on the subject that it is impossible to reconcile their opin- 
ions. As not even the description of a temple is complete without some 



464 APPENDIX. 

reference to this important question, and as the question itself undei'- 
lies every notion we may form of ancient Egypt and ancient Egyp- 
tians, I have thought it well to group here a few representative extracts 
from ihe worlis of one or two of the greatest authorities upon the 
subject. 

'• Tlie religion of the Egyptians consisted of an extended polytheism 
represented by a series of local groups. The idea of a single deity self- 
existing or produced was involved in the conception of some of the 
principal gods, who are said to have given birth to or produced gods, 
men, all beings and things. Other deities were considered to be self- 
produced. The Sun was the older object of worship, and in his various 
forms, as the rising, midday, and setting Sun, was adored under diifer- 
ent names, and was often vuiited, especially at Thebes, to the types of 
other deities, as Amen and Mentu. The oldest of all the local deities, 
rtah, who was worshipped at Memphis, was a demiurgos or creator of 
lieaven, earth, gods and men, and not identified with the Sun. Besides 
the worship of the solar gods, that of Osiris extensively prevailed, and 
with it the antagonism of Set, the Egyptian devil, the metempsychosis 
or transmigi'ation of the soul, the future judgment, the purgatory or 
Hades, the Karneter, the Aahlu or Elysium, and final union of the soul 
to the body after the lapse of several centuries. Besides the deities of 
Heaven, the light, and the lower world, others personified the elements 
or presided over the operations of nature, the seasons, and events." — 
Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Booms: Brit. ilus. S. 
BiKCH, 1874. 

This religion, obscured as it is by a complex mythology, has lent itself 
to many interpretations of a contradictory nature, none of which have 
been unanimously adopted. But that which is beyond doubt, and 
which shines forth from the texts for the whole world's acceptance, is 
the belief in one God. The polytheism of the moiumients is but an 
outward show. The innumerable Gods of the Pantheon are but mani- 
festations of the One Being in his various capacities. That taste for 
allegory which created the hieroglyphic writing, found vent likewise in 
the expression of the religious idea ; that idea being, as it were, stifled in 
the later periods by a too-abundant symbolism." — P. PiKiiiiKT, Bic- 
tionnaire d'' Arch. Erjyptienne, 1875. Translated from article on 
"' Beligion.^^ 

"This God of the Egyptians was unique, pei'fect, endued with knowl- 
edge and intelligence and so far incomprehensible that one can scarcely 
say in what respects he is incompi-ehensible. He is the one who exists 
by essence; the one sole life of all substance; the one single generator in 
heaven and earth who is not himself engendered; the father of fathers; 
tlie mother of mothers; always the same; immutable in imnmtable 
perfection; existing equally in the past, the present, and the future. 
He fills the universe in such wise that no earthly image can give the 
feeblest notion of his immensity. He is felt everywhere; he is tangible 
nowhere." — G. Maspeko. Translated from Histoire Ancienne des 
Peuples de V Orient. Paris, 1876, chap, i., p. 26. 

" Unfortunately, the more we study the religion of ancient Egypt, the 
more oiu' doubts accumulate with regard to the cliaracter which must 
finally be attributed to it. The excavations carried on of late at Denderah 
and Edf ii have opened up to us an extraordinary fertile source of material. 
These Temples are covered with texts, and present precisely the appear- 
ance of two books which authoritatively treat not only of the Gods to 
which these two Temples are dedicated, but of the religion under its 



APPENDIX. 465 

more general aspects. But neither in these Temples, nor in those which 
have been long known to us, appears the One God of Jamblichus. If 
Ammon is ' Tlie First of tlie First' at Thebes, if Phtali is at Menipliis 
' The Father of all Beings, without Beginning or End,' so also is every 
other Egyptian God separately endowed with these attributes of the 
Divine Being. In other words, we everywhere find Gods who are un- 
create and immortal; but nowhere that unique, invisible Deity, witliout 
name and without form, who was supposed to hover above tlie higliest 
summit of the Egyptian pantheon. The Temple of Denderali, now ex- 
plored to the end of its most hidden inscriptions, of a ceitainty furnislies 
no trace of this Deity. Tlie one result which above all others seems to be 
educed from the study of this Temple, is that (according to the Egyp- 
tians) the Universe was God himself, and that Pantheism foi'uied the 
foundation of their religion." — A. Maijiettk Bey. Translated from 
Itineraire dela Haute Egypte. Alexandria, 1872, p. 54. 

" The Sun is the most ancient object of Egyptian worsliip found upon 
the monuments. His birth each day when lie springs from the bosom 
of the nocturnal heaven is the natural emblem of the eternal generation 
of the divinity. Hence the celestial space became identified with the 
divine mother. It was particularly the nocturnal heavenjwhich was rep- 
resented by this personage. The rays of the sun, as they awakened all 
nature, seemed to give life to animated beings. Hence that which 
doubtless was originally a symbol, became the foundation of the religion. 
It is the Sun himself whom we find habitually invoked as the supreme 
being. The addition of his Egyptian name, Ra, to the names of certain 
local divinities, would seem to show that this identification constituted a 
second epoch in the history of the religions of the Valley of the Nile." — 
Viscount E. de Rouge. Translated from Notice Sommaire des Monu- 
ments Egyptiens du Louvre. Paris, 1873, p. 120. 

That the religion, whether based on a solar myth or upon a genuine 
belief in a spiritual God. became grossly material in its later developments, 
is apparent to every student of the monuments. M. Maspero has the 
following remarks on the degeneration of the old faith: — 

" In the course of ages, the sense of the religion became obscured. In 
the texts of Greek and Roman date, tliat lofty conception of tlie divinity 
which had been cherished by the early theologians of Egypt still peeps 
out here and there. Fragmentary phrases and epithets yet prove that 
the fundamental principles of the religion are not quite forgotten. For 
the most part, however, we find that we no longer have to do with the 
infinite and intangible God of ancient days; but rather with a God of 
flesh and blood who lives upon earth, and has so abased himself as to be 
no more than a human king. It is no longer this God of whom no man 
knew either the form or the substance: — it is Kneph at Esneh; Hatlior 
at Denderah ; Horus, king of tlie divine dynasty, at Edfu. This king has 
a court, ministers, an army, a fleet. His eldest son, Horhat, Prince of 
Gush and heir-presumptive to the throne, commands the troops. His 
first minister Thoth, the inventor of letters, has geography and rhetoric 
at his fingers' ends; is Historiographer-Royal; and is entrusted with the 
duty of recording the victories of the king and of celebrating them In 
high-sounding phraseology. When this God makes war upon his neigh- 
bour Typhon, lie makes no use of tlie divine weapons of which we should 
take it for granted that he could dispose at will. He calls out his archers 
and his chariots; descends the Nile in his galley, as might the last new 
Pharaoh; directs marches and counter-marches; fights planned battles; 
carries cities by storm, and brings all Egypt in submission to his feet. 



466 APPENDIX. 

We see here that the Egyptians of Ptolemaic times had substituted for 
the one God of tlieir ancestors a line of Goil-kings, and had embroidered 
tliese modern legends with a host of fantastic details." — G. Maspicuo. 
Ti'anslated from Uistoire Ancienne des Peuples de V Orient, Paris, 
1876, chap. i. pp. 50-51. 



APPENDIX IV. 

Egyptian Chronology. 

The chronology of Egypt has been a disputed point for centuries. 
The Egyptians had no cycle, and only dated in the regnal years of their 
monarchs. The principal Greek sources have been the canon of Ptol- 
emy, drawn up in the second century a,d. , and tlie lists of the dynas- 
ties extracted from the historical work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, 
who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 285-247. The 
discrepancies between these lists and the monuments have given rise to 
many schemes and rectifications, of the chronology. The principal chro- 
nological points of information obtained from tlJie monuments are the 
conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, B.C. 527, the commencement of the 
reign of Psammetichus I, B.C. 665, the reign of Tirhaka, about B.C. 
693, and that of Bocchoris, about B.C. 720, the synchronism of the 
reign of Shishak I with the capture of Jerusalem, about B.C. 970. The 
principal monuments tlirowing light on other parts of the chronology 
are the recorded lieliacal risings of Sothis, or the Dog-star, in the reigns 
of Thothmes III and Rameses II, III, VI, IX, the date of 400 years 
from the time of Rameses II to the Shepherd kings, the dated sepulchral 
tablets of the bull Apis at the Serapeum, the lists of kings at Sakkarah, 
Thebes, and Abydos, the chronological canon of the Turin papyrus, 
and other incidental notices. But of the anterior dynasties no certain 
chronological dates are afforded by the monuments, those hitherto 
proposed not having stood tlie test of historical or philological criti- 
cism." — S. BiKCH, LL.D. : Guide to the First and Second Ec/yptian 
Booms at the Brit. Museum. 1874, p. 10. 

As some indication of the wide divergence of opinion upon this sub- 
ject, it is enough to point out that the German Egyptologists alone dif- 
fer as to the date of Menes or Mena (the first authentic king of the 
ancient empire), to the following extent : — 

B.C. 

BoECKH places Mena in 5702 



Ungeb 
Bkugsch 
Lauth 
Lepsius 

Bunsen 



5613 

4455 
4157 
3892 
3623 



Mariette, though recognising the need for extreme caution in the 
acceptance or rejection of any of these calculations, inclined on the 
whole to abide by tlie lists of j\ianetho; according to which the thirty- 
four recorded dynasties would stand as follows : — 



APPENDIX. 



467 



ANCIENT EMPIRE. 
Dynasties. Capitals. 



J; I This 
iii.^ 



IV. / Memphis . 

VI. Elephantine 
VII. 
VIII. 

Heracleopolis 



/ > Mempliis . 

:'. ) 



MIDDLE EMPIRE. 



il- 



XI. 

XII. > Thebes 
XIII. 
XIV. Xois 

XV. ) 

XVI. > Shepherd Kings 
XVII. ) 



3500 

3358 
3240 



3064 

2851 
2398 

2214 



NEW EMPIRE. 
Dynasties. Capitals, b.c. 



XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 



►Thebes . . 

Tan is . . . 
Bubastls 

Tanis . . . 

Sais . . . 
(Etliiopians) 

Sais ... . 

(Persians) . 

Sais . . . 

Meiides . . 

Sebennytis . 

(Persians) . 



LOWER EMPIRE. 

XXXII. Macedonians 

XXXIII. (Greelis) . . 

XXXIV. (Romans) , . 



332 

305 

30 



To this clironology may be opposed tlie brief table of dates compiled 
by M. Chabas. This table represents what may be called the medium 
school of Egyptian chronology, and is offered by M. Chabas, " not as 
an attempt to reconcile systems," but as an aid to the classification of 
certain broadly indicated epochs. 

B.C. 

Mena and the commencement of the Ancient Empire . 4000 
Construction of the great Pyramids .... 3300 
Vlth Dynasty 2800 

Xllth Dynasty | ^^JO 

Shepherd Invasion ? 

Expulsion of Shepherds, and commencement of. the 

New Empire 1800 

Thothmes III 1700 

Seti I and Rameses II 1 J^^^ 

Sheshonk (Shishak), the conqueror of Jerusalem . 1000 

Saitic Dynasties \ i^^ 

Cambyses and the Persians 500 

Second Persian conquest ...... 400 

(300 
Ptolemies ^200 

MOO 



468 APPENDIX. 



-APPENDIX V. 

Contemporary Chronology of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and 
Babylon. 

A VEKY important addition to oiir chronological information with 
regard to the synchronous history of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopota- 
mia, and Babylonia lias been brought to light during this present year 
(1888) by tlie great discovery of cuneiform tablets at Tel-el-Amarna in 
Upper Egypt. Tliese tablets consist for the most part of letters and 
despatches sent to Ameuhotep III and Amenhotep IV by the kings of 
Babylonia and the princes and governors of Palestine, Syria, and Meso- 
potamia; some being addressed to Amenhotep IV (Khu-en-Aten) by 
Burna-buryas, King of Babylonia, who lived about B.C. 1430. Tliis 
gives us the date of tlie life and reign of Amenhotep IV, and conse- 
quently the approximate date of tlie foundation of the cily known to us 
as Tel-el-Aiuarna, and of the establisliment of the new religion of the 
Disk- worship; and it is the earliest synclironism yet establislied between 
the history of ancient Egypt and that of any of lier contemporaries. 

From these tablets we also learn that the consort of Ainenliotep IV 
was a Syrian princess, and daughter of Dnschratta, King of Naharina 
(called in the tablets " the land of Mitanni") on the upper Euplirates. 
For a full and learned description of some of the most interesting of 
these newly discovered documents, see Dr. Erman's paper, entitled I)er 
TJiontafelfund von Tell Amarna, read before the Berlin Academy on 
3d May 1888. 



